WPR10LA479 · Piper PA-46-350P
Garco Equipment Piper PA-46-350P · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) during landing
From Richland Airport (RLD) to Felts Field (SFF)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10LA479
- 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-46-350P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-46
- 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
- N90SE
- Operator
- Garco Equipment
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Richland Airport (RLD), Richland, WATo Felts Field (SFF), Spokane, WA
- 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
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, after a normal touchdown the airplane began a skidding turn to the right. The pilot was unable to keep the airplane on the runway and it struck a runway light during the runway excursion, which occurred as a result of a deflated tire on the right main landing gear. On-scene examination revealed that the valve of the tire's inner tube had separated from the tube. The left main landing gear tire was found to be properly inflated, the tread depth on both the left and right main landing gear tires was sufficient, and neither the left nor the right main landing gear tires exhibited any indications of abnormal wear. The pilot indicated that the right tire and tube were replaced about 17 months before the accident and that they had accumulated about 295 hours and 107 cycles in service. The tube was manufactured about 1 year prior to its installation.
Examination of the tube and the recovered valve revealed that a small area of a manufacturing splice had opened, which permitted the tube to deflate. The deflated tire then slipped on the wheel during landing, which separated the valve from the tube body. The tube manufacturer did not provide any reasons for the splice failure. Neither the root cause nor the exact timing of the splice failure could be determined.
Probable cause
The failure of a manufacturing splice of the right main landing gear tire’s inner tube, which resulted in a deflated tire and a consequent loss of directional control on landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10LA479
- Event ID
- 20101001X13012
- Case number
- WPR10LA479
- 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: 4082204c006b591a36630e4b0e52c68fc0f474b0a6768ec2b63fc87ae2fcab36; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:26:19.199Z.