LAX06CA149 · M.C. Thomas Thorpe T-18
M.C. Thomas Thorpe T-18 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From 4SD · Reno to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX06CA149
- 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
M.C. Thomas Thorpe T-18
- Aircraft type
- M C Thomas THORPE T-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
- N778T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 4SD · RenoTo not recorded
- 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 airplane veered off the runway during landing and nosed over after encountering soft sand. The pilot had recently purchased the airplane, and this was his third instructional flight. The main purpose of this flight was to work on directional control of the airplane. The pilot and his flight instructor departed on runway 08, with a crosswind from 160 degrees at 3 to 4 miles per hour (mph), for work in the traffic pattern. During the second landing, the pilot landed to the left of the centerline. As the tail wheel settled onto the runway, the airplane veered to the left. He increased the throttle, and applied right rudder. The airplane did not seem to respond, so he applied the brakes. It veered hard to the left and went off the runway into soft sand and sagebrush and nosed over.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain directional control. A contributing factor was the certified flight instructor's inadequate supervision of the flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX06CA149
- Event ID
- 20060531X00655
- Case number
- LAX06CA149
- 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 2006-04-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 585e0e04debe21dcadd9dfc5692b8f44b7754b992fcf1e48edaf5161bc459eaa; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:47:28.141Z.