CEN13LA379 · Piper PA-25-235
Piper PA-25-235 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Salisbury, MO to Salisbury, MO
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
- CEN13LA379
- 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-25-235
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-25
- 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
- N4812Y
- Operator
- Slaughter Bradley R
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salisbury, MOTo Salisbury, MO
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot landed the tailwheel-equipped airplane with a left crosswind on a dirt road. As the airplane slowed down, he applied the right rudder and brake. The pilot said the right brake was soft, and he tried to pump it several times before he decided to go around. After applying power, the pilot was unable to maintain directional control, and the airplane veered off of the road and into a ditch. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that, when the right rudder pedal was in the neutral position and the brake was applied, it held pressure. However, when full right rudder and brake were applied, the brake contacted the hopper, which limited the brake's full travel. It could not be determined if the amount of pressure applied to the brake in this condition was enough to provide adequate braking power. However, even with the limitations of the brake with the rudder pedal fully extended, the pilot had made several uneventful landings before the accident and reported no problems with the brakes. He said that the accident could have been prevented if he had decided to go around sooner.
Probable cause
The airplane's reduced braking efficiency and the pilot's subsequent delayed decision to go around, which resulted in a loss of directional control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13LA379
- Event ID
- 20130701X00447
- Case number
- CEN13LA379
- 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: e6910b60c37cd536c92ac64ae36bb6c38c7a869c3397c4ecbd8297169b3b3ced; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:02:21.946Z.