SEA06CA157 · Piggott Bearhawk
Piggott Bearhawk · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during takeoff
From William R Fairchild International Airport (CLM) to Sequim Valley Airport (W28)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA06CA157
- 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
Piggott Bearhawk
- Aircraft type
- Piggott BEARHAWK
- 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
- N347JP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From William R Fairchild International Airport (CLM), Port Angeles, WATo Sequim Valley Airport (W28), Sequim, 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- 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
- Landing gear, steering system › Disconnected
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not possible
- Pilot in command › Ground loop/swerve, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that he had done several stop-and-go landings; he then made a full stop for a respite. When he taxied out for his next departure on runway 08, he experienced no steering problems. As he took off, the airplane vibrated briefly. The pilot performed another landing and had a firm touchdown. He said the aircraft immediately veered left and full right rudder had no effect. He said that his feet had slipped off the aircraft's toe brakes during the landing, so differential braking was not possible. The right main landing gear collapsed, and the right wing and aileron were bent. Postaccident examination of the tail wheel assembly revealed that the clevis which connected the left tail wheel spring to the wheel's steering arm was missing. Additionally, serpentine skid marks where found on the runway that appeared to be the result of a tailwheel shimmy. The pilot reported that the wind during his first landing was from 350 degrees at 6 knots.
Probable cause
The loss of directional control as a result of the disconnected tail wheel steering system, which led to an inadvertent ground loop during the landing roll.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA06CA157
- Event ID
- 20060906X01302
- Case number
- SEA06CA157
- 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: a1242193499010c452c16f9b5c90e867f07f44f246c4c7e7411de378011f6012; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:37:17.956Z.