SEA04LA098 · Piper PA-18-150
Piper PA-18-150 · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Pryor, MT to Woltermann Memorial Airport (6S3)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA04LA098
- 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
- N82172
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pryor, MTTo Woltermann Memorial Airport (6S3), Columbus, 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- In flight collision with object
- 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 thunderstorms and showers were moving through the area at the time with a strong crosswind present. The pilot flew around the area for about 30 minutes then returned for landing. The pilot attempted one landing to runway 28 with no flaps extended, but because of too high an airspeed, initiated a go-around. During the second attempt with one notch of flaps extended, the aircraft touched down, and the pilot was maintaining directional control until the tail touched down and a strong gust of wind from the left hit the aircraft. The pilot was having difficulty maintaining directional control so he increased power to go-around. The engine momentarily hesitated and the aircraft began to travel to the right side, heading off the runway surface at about a 45 degree angle toward airport hangars. The aircraft traveled through the median and taxiway ramp before becoming airborne. Just prior to colliding with the first hangar, the pilot banked the airplane to the left, however, the right wing clipped the corner of the hangar. The aircraft continued on for another about 50 yards before colliding into the roof of a second hangar. Witnesses reported that the strong gusting wind was out of the south at about 15 to 20 knots with thunderstorms in the area
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control of the aircraft during the landing and subsequent go-around. Inadequate compensation for the gusting winds and an airport hangar were factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA04LA098
- Event ID
- 20040608X00752
- Case number
- SEA04LA098
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2004-06-05.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f82710458623c5c2bb69bcbd8a444fdefca9ff2d3a3eb57613f469c722483956; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:13:42.941Z.