ERA09LA468 · Piper PA-12
Piper PA-12 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From South Jersey Regional Airport (VAY) to South Jersey Regional Airport (VAY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09LA468
- 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-12
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-12
- 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
- N7556H
- Operator
- Dennis Mazzoni / John Pallante
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From South Jersey Regional Airport (VAY), Mount Holly, NJTo South Jersey Regional Airport (VAY), Mount Holly, NJ
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that after he lowered the tailwheel to the runway on landing, the airplane became "squirrely" and veered to the left. He attempted to correct the trajectory with the application of "full left rudder and brake," but the airplane departed the dry paved surface of the 50-foot-wide runway and ground-looped in the grass on the left side of the runway. The pilot believed that the non-pilot-rated passenger had inadvertently interfered with the airplane controls, but the passenger denied any interference. A Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspector examined the airplane and stated that the tailwheel centering mechanism was "weak," and could "easily" be moved out of the centered position. An FAA-conducted functional check of the left brake system determined that the system operated normally. The right braking system was damaged in the accident, which precluded a functional check, but the FAA inspector reported that a visual check did not reveal any preaccident failures.
Probable cause
A loss of directional control during landing for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09LA468
- Event ID
- 20090820X81550
- Case number
- ERA09LA468
- 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: 400df0d0f9a97cc091ce64bd076682e63e0949006eafc5cbeeae673fc20002a4; retrieved 2026-09-15T12:49:22.636Z.