SEA07CA065 · Piper PA-12
Piper PA-12 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Lewiston Nez Perce County Airport (LWS) to Lewiston Nez Perce County Airport (LWS)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA07CA065
- 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-12
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-12
- 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
- N2343M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lewiston Nez Perce County Airport (LWS), Lewiston, IDTo Lewiston Nez Perce County Airport (LWS)
- 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
- Passenger › Rudder, inadvertent use
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, at the aircraft owner's request, he was flying with the passenger to help him become current since the passenger had not flown any type of aircraft in the last 8 years. The pilot was making a no-flap 3-point full stall landing with the passenger following on the controls with him. During the landing roll, as the airplane slowed down, the pilot let some pressure off the rudder pedals to slide his toes up onto the brakes. As soon as the pressure was released from the rudder pedals, the airplane started to swerve "one way then the other." The pilot attempted to correct, but the airplane "spun a 180-degree turn to the left." The left wing tip and the right elevator struck the ground. The pilot reported that the passenger was wearing heavy boots and may have inadvertently "kicked hard right or left rudder and then became briefly entangled in the rudder pedals."
Probable cause
the inadvertent use of the rudder by the passenger, which resulted in an inadvertent ground loop.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA07CA065
- Event ID
- 20070318X00303
- Case number
- SEA07CA065
- 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: 18f079114af286a3d1ffa399f96d2f4ccf7d9497184ba9dd9b2bcecfba7a082e; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:01:24.275Z.