SEA04LA115 · Piper PA-20
Piper PA-20 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Deer Park Airport (DEW) to Deer Park Airport (DEW)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA04LA115
- 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
- N699DS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Deer Park Airport (DEW), Deer Park, WATo Deer Park Airport (DEW), Deer Park, 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
- 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(cfi) › Remedial action, delayed
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/owner had previously received a tail wheel endorsement, but had not utilized it for a number of years. He was therefore working with an instructor to regain his proficiency, but the flight instructor chose to fly in the left seat because the airplane only had brakes on that side, and it had been awhile since he had instructed in a tail wheel aircraft. On the second touch-and-go of the day, the owner made an approach with the intent to do a three-point landing, but inadvertently allowed the airplane's main wheels to contact the ground first, resulting in a bounce. The airplane then touched down in a three-point attitude and began to swerve to the left. The owner applied right rudder, but could not stop the turn. Seeing that the owner was having difficulty, the flight instructor took control of the airplane and attempted to correct the situation by applying "full" right rudder, right brake, and left aileron. The instructor did not take corrective action in time to arrest the left turn, and subsequently, the right main gear collapsed, and the airplane came to rest on the runway. It was ultimately determined that although the aircraft was responding correctly to pilot inputs, a realignment/warping of its fuselage due to a number of previous repairs caused it to be very sensitive to any rudder inputs. Although the aircraft was responding correctly to the pilot's inputs, its degree of sensitivity made it difficult for the owner to control from the right seat, and required quicker than normal remedial action by the flight instructor.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's delayed remedial action. Factors include the owner/pilot's failure to maintain directional control during the landing roll, and a warped/realigned fuselage that contributed to the sensitivity of the aircraft's response to pilot rudder inputs.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA04LA115
- Event ID
- 20040702X00901
- Case number
- SEA04LA115
- 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: e0fdda173b69f8514b371ac7067955468dd1643ab991b661e97f637c2db3c6aa; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:16:34.203Z.