ERA10CA245 · Piper PA-22-135
Piper PA-22-135 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Skyhaven Airport (76N) to Cherry Ridge Airport (N30)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10CA245
- 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-22-135
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-22
- 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
- N170JH
- Operator
- Vincent Peter Cianfichi, Jr
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Skyhaven Airport (76N), Tunkhannock, PATo Cherry Ridge Airport (N30), Hoensdale, PA
- 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
- 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
The pilot of the tailwheel airplane stated, "my touchdown was a bounce, followed by a smaller bounce. The airplane started veering left and off the runway. I applied right rudder and added power to try to straighten out when the tail came out left. I cut the power as the ground loop occurred. The airplane came to rest 180 degrees, facing south." Damage to the airplane consisted of substantial damage to the left wing spar and left elevator. The pilot added that the accident could have been prevented by making the decision to acquire more time with landings in this type of airplane prior to solo, and prior to operating on a hard surface. The pilot reported 5 hours of total experience in the make and model accident airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper final approach, resulting in a bounced landing and ground loop. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's lack of experience in tailwheel airplanes.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10CA245
- Event ID
- 20100427X55640
- Case number
- ERA10CA245
- 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: 7c71619fd8350b80e8c56c32e2fdc743b50eaf0be68f9e3d046ec58fc8463fda; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:55:58.958Z.