ERA12CA311 · Piper PA-18-150
Piper PA-18-150 · Accident: landing area undershoot
From Oriskany, NJ to Eaton, NY
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12CA311
- 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
- N82398
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From Oriskany, NJTo Eaton, NY
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Landing area undershoot
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
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 stated that he permitted the airplane to get low and slow during short final approach to the runway. He stated that he increased the engine power; however, the engine did not “seem” to immediately respond. Although the pilot tried to stretch the glide to reach the grass airstrip, the airplane skimmed the river water in front of the strip, and the airplane impacted an adjacent riverbank and came to rest inverted at the beginning of the grass strip, incurring substantial damage to the vertical empennage section. The pilot stated that there were no preimpact malfunctions or anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. A review of the pilot’s certification showed that his last medical certificate was issued in February 2007, and was expired when the accident occurred.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper approach to landing, which resulted in the airplane touching down short of the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12CA311
- Event ID
- 20120430X23916
- Case number
- ERA12CA311
- 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: 506a60db9e4b65f85f5979eda6516c875811172246ec33cb4c569c8865bfd0ad; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:55:30.364Z.