WPR10LA253 · Schweizer Aircraft Corp G-164B
Sunrise Dusters Schweizer Aircraft Corp G-164B · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) during landing
From Sunrise Dusters Airport (CA18) to Sunrise Dusters Airport (CA18)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10LA253
- 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
Schweizer Aircraft Corp G-164B
- Aircraft type
- Schweizer G-164
- 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
- N3633C
- Operator
- Sunrise Dusters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sunrise Dusters Airport (CA18), Robbins, CATo Sunrise Dusters Airport (CA18), Robbins, 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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 systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During an agricultural application flight, the pilot noticed that the right brake pedal was stiff and saw what appeared to be hydraulic fluid on his foot. The pilot tried without success to set and release the brake to correct the stiff brake pedal. He radioed his base of operations to notify ground personnel of the possible brake problem and of his intention to return to the airfield. The pilot attempted to land the tailwheel-equipped airplane with a direct crosswind that was 15 knots, gusting to 20 knots. As soon as the airplane’s right wheel touched down, the pilot felt the airplane start to pull to the right. When he tried to correct the airplane’s direction to the left, the pilot felt the wind shift and the airplane veered off the left side of the runway into an adjacent irrigation ditch. The left wing came to rest on the sloping terrain forming the ditch. The investigation showed that the right brake calipers separated from the airplane at touchdown. Examination of the right wheel revealed that the inner wheel hub flange sustained a circumferential failure that allowed the inflated tire and tube to expand and impinge upon the brake disc and caliper. The examination further showed that the tire installed on the airplane was a larger size than the standard tire size recommended by the manufacturer of the wheel assembly (29x11.0-10 instead of 8.50-10). Because of its larger-than-standard size, the tire impinged on the brake disc and caliper after the wheel hub flange failed, which resulted in the caliper’s separation upon touchdown.
According to the type certificate holder for the airplane, some G-164B operators of the accident airplane model have obtained field approval from their local Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) flight standards district office to use the oversize tires. The FAA had issued such a field approval for the accident airplane. As a result of this accident and the subsequent investigation, on December 15, 2010, the FAA issued Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin CE-11-06, which reminded operators that oversized tire modifications require analysis and substantiation as well as periodic inspections to prevent unsafe conditions, none of which were accomplished in this case.
Probable cause
The failure of the wheel hub flange, which allowed the over size tire to expand and impinge on the brake disc and caliper, which resulted in a loss of control during the landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10LA253
- Event ID
- 20100522X12447
- Case number
- WPR10LA253
- 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: 147c6156974c5db7df52aec3744dbc0b72c20b93b30aa7c81df467de56744f94; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:10:46.656Z.