SEA08CA009 · Piper PA-22/20
Piper PA-22/20 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Canyon Ferry Airport (8U9) to Townsend Airport (8U8)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA08CA009
- 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-22/20
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-22
- 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
- N1139C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Canyon Ferry Airport (8U9), Canyon Ferry, MTTo Townsend Airport (8U8), Townsend, MT
- 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
- Dual student › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Remedial action, not possible
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor stated that the purpose of the flight was for the private pilot/owner to receive instruction for the tailwheel endorsement. After practicing several successful takeoffs and landings, the flight instructor had the private pilot set-up for a full stop wheel landing to runway 16, which had a six knot, 45 degree crosswind. While in ground effect, the private pilot reduced the throttle too fast, which increased the sink rate and the aircraft touched down firmly on the mains. The private pilot arrested the bounce with forward pressure before the aircraft lifted off, and applied some power to maintain directional control. The aircraft then began to make an excursion from the runway centerline and the private pilot lowered the tail which made the aircraft unstable. The flight instructor then assisted the private pilot and stabilized the aircraft. The private pilot then indicated that he could handle the situation, and the flight instructor returned control back to the private pilot. The flight instructor stated that he may have returned control back to the private pilot too quickly, as the situation degraded to large excursion from centerline, and the aircraft diverted from normal track. The flight instructor was not able to regain directional control and the aircraft ground looped to the left. During the ground loop, the right wing and elevator contacted the ground and were structurally damaged.
Probable cause
The private pilot/student failed to maintain directional control during the landing roll, and remedial action was not possible by the flight instructor which resulted in an inadvertent ground loop.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA08CA009
- Event ID
- 20071102X01713
- Case number
- SEA08CA009
- 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: dd5cc92ad82eaef0e45905828aa4712f7f767ada742f6484c7ecddc0256d697b; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:21:25.162Z.