ERA14LA015 · Piper PA-22-135
Piper PA-22-135 · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) during takeoff
From Penn Valley Airport (SEG) to Penn Valley Airport (SEG)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA015
- 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-22-135
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-22
- 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
- N170JH
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Penn Valley Airport (SEG), Selinsgrove, PATo Penn Valley Airport (SEG), Selinsgrove, PA
- Aircraft age
- About 60 years (built 1953)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, during takeoff, he applied full throttle and that, when the airplane began to gain airspeed, he pushed the yoke forward to bring the tailwheel off the runway. The tail did not rise, and the airplane subsequently "jumped" off the runway; the pilot pushed the yoke forward again, but the airplane continued to climb. The pilot then decreased the engine power, the airplane's nose lowered, and the pilot pulled back on the yoke to arrest the descent, but the nose did not rise. The airplane continued to descend at a higher rate, and the pilot applied nose-up trim; however, the airplane subsequently impacted the runway.
Examination of the airplane maintenance logbooks revealed that the accident flight was the first flight after an annual inspection had been completed and that the elevator control cables were replaced during the inspection. Examination revealed that the elevator control cables were installed incorrectly and moved the elevators in the direction opposite to that commanded: when the pilot pushed the yoke forward, the airplane climbed, and, when the pilot pulled the yoke aft, the airplane descended. It is likely that the maintenance personnel installed the flight control cables incorrectly and failed to verify that the routing from the elevator cables to the control yoke was correct during the recent annual inspection and postmaintenance check. It is also likely that the pilot failed to perform an adequate preflight check, which required the pilot to verify that all controls were in the proper position.
Probable cause
The incorrect (reverse) rigging of the elevator cables by maintenance personnel and their subsequent failure to verify that the rigging was correct during postmaintenance checks and the pilot's inadequate preflight check.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA015
- Event ID
- 20131023X03444
- Case number
- ERA14LA015
- 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: bcba5d5ee1d526ec8c843ac7aecaf7063151fbdf1615528071cf4c519c28bdb4; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:00:06.604Z.