LAX05LA040 · Piper PA-22-160
Piper PA-22-160 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Prescott Regional Airport - Ernest A. Love Field (PRC) to General William J Fox Airfield (WJF)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05LA040
- 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-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
- N9827D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Prescott Regional Airport - Ernest A. Love Field (PRC), Prescott, AZTo General William J Fox Airfield (WJF), Lancaster, CA
- 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 › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane veered off the runway during an aborted takeoff and collided with terrain. The pilot performed a before takeoff check of the flight controls and engine systems and initiated the takeoff roll, departing runway 21L. The airplane became airborne after a normal takeoff ground roll distance, and began to climb at a rate of about 100 to 200 feet per minute. After the airplane reached an altitude about 100 feet above ground, the pilot decided that the airplane was not gaining sufficient altitude. He estimated that sufficient runway remained, 2,000 to 2,500 feet, and decided to perform a precautionary landing. After a normal touchdown along the runway centerline, the airplane veered to the left during landing rollout. The airplane continued off the runway into nearby grass. The left main gear impacted soft soil, pivoting the airplane to the left. The pilot said that with only 3.5 hours of experience in the tail wheel equipped airplane, he was not yet accustomed to the manner in which the airplane frequently veered to the left during the landing rollout phase. He stated that he was hesitant to overcorrect and cited unfamiliarity with this characteristic of the airplane as a possible contributing factor to the loss of directional control.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain directional control during landing rollout. A contributing factor in the accident was the pilot's unfamiliarity with the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05LA040
- Event ID
- 20041213X01976
- Case number
- LAX05LA040
- 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: f44b9abf1929b54264601c8d58b3f36cf71b1c95bdd9e67e98ce929f45804a39; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:29:27.146Z.