SEA04LA075 · Piper PA-20
Piper PA-20 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Renton Municipal Airport (RNT) to Bandera State Airport (4W0)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA04LA075
- 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-20
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-20
- 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
- N7631K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Renton Municipal Airport (RNT), Renton, WATo Bandera State Airport (4W0), North Bend, WA
- 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
- Pilot in command › Aircraft 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 while in flight, he heard a "flapping sound" and since he was near an airstrip, he decided to land to check the aircraft. The pilot stated that when he was abeam the windsock, which is located near mid-field, he noted that the sock was limp. Since he was already on the downwind for runway 26, he continued in the pattern for landing. The pilot reported that the aircraft was a little high on final approach, so he slipped the aircraft to attain the correct altitude. Just prior to touchdown, the pilot felt a tailwind gust which pushed the aircraft. The pilot continued the landing and the aircraft touched down about one-third of the way down the airstrip. The aircraft rolled for a short distance then became airborne again, subsequently touching down about three-quarters of the way down the airstrip. During the landing roll, the pilot stated that, "...a combination of rough field, tailwind, and braking led to the tail coming up past the point of no return, and on her back we went..." The aircraft then nosed over and came to rest inverted. The wind gusts were reported by the pilot as from the east, with gusts of 8 to 12 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control during the landing roll. A rough landing surface and tailwind gusts were factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA04LA075
- Event ID
- 20040430X00544
- Case number
- SEA04LA075
- 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: 1b3b36b4c221667f6093869d621a96a8ea974b1bedff9774bb44d1dfc31874c1; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:38:47.903Z.