LAX08CA076 · Piper PA-28-181
Pan Am International Flight Academy Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Wickenburg Municipal Airport (E25) to Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX08CA076
- 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-28-181
- 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
- N416PA
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From Wickenburg Municipal Airport (E25), Wickenberg, AZTo Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT), 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
- Landing · landing roll
- Defining eventThe 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot positioned the airplane's wing flaps to the 40-degree position and crabbed the airplane into the left crosswind, which averaged 220 degrees at 11 knots. Four minutes before the accident, the airport's local wind direction was reported as variable at 4 knots with 19-knot gusts. The student pilot landed on runway 25R, and as the airplane decelerated, the pilot attempted to exit the runway at a rate of speed that was too fast to negotiate the turnoff. The pilot lost directional control as the airplane swerved left and collided with several airport signs. Thereafter, the landing gear collapsed.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for the crosswind condition and failure to maintain directional control during the landing roll. Contributing to the accident was the crosswind condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX08CA076
- Event ID
- 20080425X00557
- Case number
- LAX08CA076
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 5b8df7eb78abd62056e03555ba01da53123bd124ea049d4221149156e907799b; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:34:59.637Z.