ERA12CA278 · Piper PA-18A
Piper PA-18A · Accident: nose over/nose down during landing
From North Palm Beach County General Aviation Airport (F45) to North Palm Beach County General Aviation Airport (F45)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12CA278
- 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-18A
- 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
- N12003
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Palm Beach County General Aviation Airport (F45), West Palm Beach, FLTo North Palm Beach County General Aviation Airport (F45), West Palm Beach, FL
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
**This brief was modified on November 1, 2013. Please see the public docket for this accident to view the original report.**
The pilot stated that when he returned to the airport after a local flight, he elected to land on the turf runway, which intersected an asphalt runway. He said he touched down on the main landing gear "fairly long" on the first portion of the turf runway at a speed of about 60 mph. The pilot delayed lowering the tailwheel until the airplane was crossing the asphalt surface and then lowered the tailwheel firmly to the ground. The airplane began to veer left, and the pilot applied full right rudder and a "slight amount" of right brake to regain directional control. When the airplane transitioned from the asphalt surface to the turf runway, it abruptly nosed over. The airplane came to rest inverted, incurring substantial damage to the rudder. An examination of the runway's asphalt to turf transition section revealed that the airplane's main landing gear tires dug into the turf as it left the slightly higher asphalt. The pilot reported no mechanical malfunctions or failures during the landing and rollout. While the airplane was being repaired after the accident, a mechanic determined that the bolts holding the main wheel halves in position were excessively long, causing the wheel halves to separate and the brake discs to change position when the airplane transitioned from the asphalt to the turf runway. This condition likely caused the brake discs to jam in their housing and the wheels to stop rotating.
Probable cause
The inadequate assembly of the brakes, which caused them to lock during the landing roll when the airplane transitioned from asphalt to turf, resulting in the airplane nosing over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12CA278
- Event ID
- 20120413X75305
- Case number
- ERA12CA278
- 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: 916412479880d56148f8fe32253532c97dca02e35b74438a5cb3ffc51aa0f1c2; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:45:01.289Z.