CHI00LA106 · Piper PA-22-160
Piper PA-22-160 · Accident: nose over while taxiing
From UNK · Tulsa, OK to Rosecrans Memorial Airport (STJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00LA106
- 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-22-160
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-22
- 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
- N8943D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From UNK · Tulsa, OKTo Rosecrans Memorial Airport (STJ)
- 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
- Taxi · from runway
- 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
- Nose over
- 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
- Pilot in command › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The accident airplane was damaged during a nose over while taxing at the Rosencrans Memorial Airport, Saint Joseph, Missouri. According to Air Traffic Control personnel at the airport, who witnessed the accident, as the airplane joined the taxiway the tail lifted up, and the airplane nosed-over. The pilot reported that, 'I used aileron deflections, turning into a quartering headwind and away from a quartering tailwind. When I came to my left turn from 090 to 360 onto taxiway Alpha, I reduced power somewhat, though not all the way. At the midpoint of the turn, when the wind was directly perpendicular to the left side of the fuselage, the tail began to rise. Soon the prop [propeller] began digging into the taxiway. According to a witness the plane went up on its nose, spun 90 degrees and fell over.' The pilot continued to report, 'I remember much training on use of ailerons during taxi, however I don't remember a lot of emphasis on the fact that higher power should be used to keep the tail down. Taildragger pilots seem to be a lot more familiar with that aspect. My power reduction for the 90 degree turn may have made it easier for the tail to rise.' Winds at the time of the accident were from 310 degrees magnetic at 40 knots gusting to 46 knots.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate compensation for the wind condition. A factor to the accident was the high winds.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00LA106
- Event ID
- 20001212X20776
- Case number
- CHI00LA106
- 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: 3a801a60945991efd6181c2130f3b06993531c4821fddcce9fbde80571ed117d; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:59:48.648Z.