SEA03LA166 · Piper PA-18-150
Piper PA-18-150 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From South Big Horn County Airport (GEY) to Park City, MT
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA03LA166
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- N115HP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From South Big Horn County Airport (GEY), Greybull, WYTo Park City, MT
- 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
- Loss of control on ground/water
- 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
- Landing gear, tire valve stem › Failure
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he over flew his intended landing site, a gravel road to determine its condition and the direction of the prevailing winds. He then made a standard traffic pattern entry landing to the east. The pilot reported that the gravel road was 25 feet wide, down sloping to the east and 1,000 feet in length that was "slightly winding." During the landing roll (decelerating through about 35-40 mph), the pilot determined that the aircraft was drifting right and he began correcting for the drift. He then noticed that the right tire was deflated and rolling on the rim. The aircraft's right wheel entered a shallow ditch at the edge of the road and the aircraft then departed the landing surface and traveled over rough down sloping terrain before nosing over and coming to rest inverted. The pilot, who held a mechanic's license, reported that upon examining the right wheel following the accident he found the wheel's valve stem to be broken.
Probable cause
The failure of the landing gear tire valve stem and the pilot's failure to maintain directional control during the landing roll. The deflation of the tire and rough/uneven terrain were factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA03LA166
- Event ID
- 20030814X01329
- Case number
- SEA03LA166
- 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, coordinates. 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: 27177468756683c66e78ff2d888f7ad35845b981085689b356b9c3563afc7e02; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:48:00.378Z.