CHI06LA100 · Piper PA-20
Piper PA-20 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Faribault Municipal Airport-Liz Wall Strohfus Field (FBL) to South St Paul Municipal Airport/Richard E Fleming Field (SGS)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI06LA100
- 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
- N1579A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Faribault Municipal Airport-Liz Wall Strohfus Field (FBL), Faribault, MNTo South St Paul Municipal Airport/Richard E Fleming Field (SGS), South St. Paul, MN
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The tailwheel airplane veered off the left side of runway 16 during the landing roll. The pilot reported that he had been practicing full-stop landings, and that all of his previous landings that day had been uneventful. The pilot stated that the airplane touched-down in a three-point stance and was tracking down the runway. After touchdown, the pilot reported he had the flight control yoke pulled all the way back, engine power all the way off, and he was braking evenly to bring the airplane to a stop. During landing roll the pilot related the airplane veered to the left without warning. The right main landing gear collapsed, and the airplane departed off the left side of the runway. The pilot noted having 19.6 hours in tailwheel airplanes, which included 12.6 hours in the same make/model as the accident airplane. The wind conditions at the time of the accident were from 360 degrees magnetic at 4 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during landing roll, which resulted in the collapse of the right main landing gear. A factor associated with the accident was a tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI06LA100
- Event ID
- 20060519X00593
- Case number
- CHI06LA100
- 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: 4eba0135fe28a33cc9f2026a6fd1ec35f97481d24d4e08c1b9f452ecd9067dc9; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:03:18.550Z.