CEN09CA069 · Piper PA-18-150
Doss Aviation Piper PA-18-150 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From USAF Academy Airfield (AFF) to USAF Academy Airfield (AFF)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09CA069
- 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-18-150
- 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
- N905CC
- Operator
- Doss Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From USAF Academy Airfield (AFF), Colorado Springs, COTo USAF Academy Airfield (AFF), Colorado Springs, CO
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, after completing the final towing flight for the day, he returned land. He was cleared to land runway 34L and touched down "on the numbers and centerline with full flaps at 45 miles per hour(MPH)." The pilot reported that the airplane immediately weather vaned to the left, and headed for the left runway edge. He applied corrective countermeasures, "over corrected", and the airplane departed the right side of the runway. The airplane came to rest on the soft shoulder after completing 180 degrees of turn (ground loop). During the ground loop maneuver, the airplane sustained a bent outer left wing and aileron, and a bent left horizontal stabilizer. The pilot reported no mechanical malfunction/failure of the airplane prior to the accident and was able to taxi the plane to it's hangar after recovery. Wind conditions reported at the time of the accident were 290 degrees at 15 MPH gusting to 20 MPH with a wind shear warning in effect.
Probable cause
Failure of the pilot to maintain directional control and his failure to compensate for wind conditions. Contributing to the accident were gusting winds with a wind shear warning in effect.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09CA069
- Event ID
- 20081121X35932
- Case number
- CEN09CA069
- 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: e6b3f04f06b36984c80be18253116f1267a70ecee73d5f23b420459b7e5b7216; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:34:02.998Z.