ERA09CA023 · Piper PA-20
Piper PA-20 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Albertville Regional Airport/Thomas J Brumlik Field (K8A0) to Albertville Regional Airport/Thomas J Brumlik Field (K8A0)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09CA023
- 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-20
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-20
- 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
- N7324K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Albertville Regional Airport/Thomas J Brumlik Field (K8A0), Albertville, ALTo Albertville Regional Airport/Thomas J Brumlik Field (K8A0), Albertville, AL
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the Piper PA-20 airplane was performing touch and go operations during visual meteorological conditions. After two touch and go landings without incident, a third landing was accomplished. The pilot reported the approach and landing procedures “occurred normally” during the third landing and he completed a three point landing with light and variable crosswinds. Between take-off and landing, wind direction had shifted approximately 180 degrees. After landing, during rollout, the aircraft abruptly turned to the left and began skidding sideways on runway. The pilot applied right rudder and left brake. As the airplane turned 90 degrees to the left, the right landing gear collapsed, and the right wing impacted the ground, resulting in substantial damage to the right wing and fuselage. The pilot reported the ground speed when accident happened was approximately 35 mile per hour. The aircraft came to rest off the edge of the left side of the runway. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical anomalies with the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain control of the airplane during the landing roll.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09CA023
- Event ID
- 20081020X40333
- Case number
- ERA09CA023
- 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. 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: b51f8d23693a90ff32873d582852550d5148ed87b21ff96865a7ccc229f9e9f5; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:29:15.301Z.