DEN99LA172 · Piper PA-18-150
Piper PA-18-150 · Accident: on ground/water encounter with weather during landing
From Montrose Regional Airport (MTJ) to Telluride Regional Airport (TEX)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN99LA172
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-18-150
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-18
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N3799Z
- Operator
- Blake C. Freeland · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montrose Regional Airport (MTJ), Montrose, COTo Telluride Regional Airport (TEX)
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Landing · landing roll
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- On ground/water encounter with weather
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Weather condition › Gusts
- Weather condition › Sudden windshift
- Weather condition › Tailwind
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to takeoff from Montrose, Colorado, the pilot called Telluride airport, located 33.3 nm to the south, and asked an airport employee what the weather conditions were. He was advised the wind was calm. Prior to landing at Telluride, he listened to the airport's ASOS, and again the wind was calm. He then confirmed that with the airport's windsock. Touchdown and initial rollout on runway 09 were normal; however, after the aircraft's tail was lowered onto the runway, the airplane encountered a tailwind gust and ground looped. When the pilot exited the aircraft, he noted that the winds were out of the west. There is no recorded weather reporting facility at Telluride airport. The closest weather facility is located at Montrose. At 1053, the winds were reported from 290 degrees at 6 knots. According to the FAA's Airport/Facility Directory, all landings at Telluride should be performed on runway 09 to avoid populated areas.
Probable cause
An encounter with a sudden tailwind gust windshift during landing roll, resulting in an inadvertent ground loop.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN99LA172
- Event ID
- 20001212X19749
- Case number
- DEN99LA172
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 42294a24889ffde6ed9fd0f322b366f6a47612a93b2151376988bab414b6c91e; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:58:51.822Z.