MIA08LA130 · Piper PA-18-135
Van Wagner Aerial Media Piper PA-18-135 · Accident: nose over/nose down during landing
From North Perry Airport (HWO) to North Perry Airport (HWO)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA08LA130
- 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-18-135
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-18
- 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
- N3257B
- Operator
- Van Wagner Aerial Media
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Perry Airport (HWO), Hollywood, FLTo North Perry Airport (HWO)
- 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
- Nose over/nose down
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated he was conducting a banner tow flight. He returned to the airport and dropped the banner, applied power to go around, and the throttle stuck at 2,500 rpm. He informed the control tower he was unable to reduce power and entered a right downwind for runway 9 right. The pilot reached under the instrument panel and pulled on the throttle cable. The throttle returned to the idle position while the airplane was abeam the landing threshold. The pilot turned the airplane on base leg, and realized the airplane was high and fast. He started slipping the airplane to lose altitude and the airplane touched down on the last one-third of the runway. The pilot observed the end of the runway, applied brakes, and the airplane nosed over inverted. Examination of the airplane revealed the throttle cable tab was separated from the airframe. Examination of the tab revealed the tab fractured due to two preexisting cracks that extended across at least 75 percent of the tab cross-sectional area.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to achieve the proper touchdown point on landing and improper use of brakes. Contributing to the accident was the failure of the throttle cable attachment tab due to preexisting cracks.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA08LA130
- Event ID
- 20080702X00966
- Case number
- MIA08LA130
- 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: 80d50a19c4875171adabba81be586a0556da66eac2762c677e40acf3866ef01b; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:51:00.631Z.