ERA14CA136 · Piper PA-18-150
Super Cub Flyers Piper PA-18-150 · Accident: dragged wing/rotor/float/other during landing
From Lake Wales, FL to Lake Wales, FL
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14CA136
- 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
- N9563P
- Operator
- Super Cub Flyers
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake Wales, FLTo Lake Wales, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 38 years (built 1976)
- 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
- Dragged wing/rotor/float/other
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he was practicing an engine out maneuver to a landing on the water. At 500 feet mean sea level, the pilot "cut" the engine power and turned the carburetor heat to full on. The pilot stated that as he neared the water, he started to flare when the left float grabbed the water first. According to the airplane owner/witness, the pilot made his approach too fast and too flat. The airplane impacted the water with the front right section of the landing float and the airplane cart-wheeled to the right.
Post-accident examination of the airplane revealed that both wings and the fuselage incurred substantial damage due to impact with the water. The pilot reported no pre-impact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper flare during a water landing, which resulted in the wings contacting the water.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14CA136
- Event ID
- 20140227X34538
- Case number
- ERA14CA136
- 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: 6465276403260b2c4e671edca1f098995d474b0b1ced0bbe92b22d59b6846f1d; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:20:57.236Z.