WPR10CA071 · Piper PA-18-150
Piper PA-18-150 · Accident: nose over/nose down during landing
From Stockton Metropolitan Airport (SCK) to Stockton Metropolitan Airport (SCK)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10CA071
- 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
- N83516
- Operator
- David A Kirsten · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stockton Metropolitan Airport (SCK), Stockton, CATo Stockton Metropolitan Airport (SCK), Stockton, CA
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was landing at an airport. He requested to land on a taxiway next to runway 29L. The air traffic control tower controller cleared the airplane to land on the taxiway; however, the pilot landed the airplane in the grass next to the taxiway. The pilot reported that during the landing roll, a gust of wind lifted the right wing. He did not have enough control authority to correct the elevated wing and the airplane nosed-over. The Federal Aviation Administration inspector examined the airplane and noted that the rear spar on the right wing was broken. At the time of the landing, the winds were reported from 350 at 22 knots, gusting to 30 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate compensation for a crosswind condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10CA071
- Event ID
- 20091130X74908
- Case number
- WPR10CA071
- 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: 27609e70a29dde3a105fe455ef55a2c8084619ce92a3fe41e71caf8cf744baa8; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:32:30.292Z.