SEA08CA026 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Sedona Airport (SEZ) to RYB · Tucson, AZ
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA08CA026
- 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-28-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N3656R
- Operator
- John C. Wi · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sedona Airport (SEZ), Sedona, AZTo RYB · Tucson, AZ
- 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
- 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 in flight
- 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 › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
- 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 private pilot reported that after reaching rotation speed of 60 miles per hour the nose lifted off the runway, "...but the plane felt sluggish and heavy, so I gently eased the nose back down and decided to let the aircraft pick up more airspeed." The pilot stated that after a few seconds the airspeed began to increase again, "...so I released back pressure again, and I felt the aircraft begin to climb." The pilot revealed that at this point [the airplane] was "hit" by a sudden gust of wind causing it to be blown to the left of the runway. The airplane subsequently impacted a taxiway sign before impacting the ground and coming to rest upright about 100 to 200 feet off the left side of runway 03. The pilot reported the wind at the time of the accident was from 150 degrees at 4 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for the wind condition, which resulted in his failure to maintain directional control during takeoff. Factors associated with the accident included the gusty crosswind condition and the taxiway sign.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA08CA026
- Event ID
- 20071210X01919
- Case number
- SEA08CA026
- 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: a581236c8d063f566cd354e8b1402c858bee77807853efaafe8133337dbf4ecf; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:16:52.699Z.