ATL05LA076 · Piper PA-20
Piper PA-20 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From Aiken Regional Airport (KAIK) to Thomaston Upson County Airport (KOPN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL05LA076
- 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
- N7053K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Aiken Regional Airport (KAIK), Aiken, SCTo Thomaston Upson County Airport (KOPN), Thomaston, GA
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, not approved
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 stated the main wheels touched down normally; when the tailwheel touched down, the airplane pulled hard to the left, and application of the rudder had no effect. The airplane continued left off the side of the runway and collided with a lighting system. The tailwheel rudder arm assembly was found fractured and separated on the right side, and evidence of a previous weld repair inboard of the fracture was observed. The weld repair was observed at the thickest area of the tapered rudder arm assembly, and the fracture was observed at a smaller-diameter area. Metallurgical examination of the rudder arm assembly revealed the aluminum component showed deformation near the fracture surfaces with no evidence of fatigue.
Probable cause
The unapproved repair of the tailwheel rudder arm assembly, which resulted in an overload failure during touchdown and subsequent loss of control of the airplane and on-ground collision with an object.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL05LA076
- Event ID
- 20050602X00709
- Case number
- ATL05LA076
- 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: fe62cd3c790cc3e8802e2735cb7c4e7ae140bd19f1da99a0e6e75eaaec057179; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:59:27.960Z.