WPR14CA229 · Aeronca 11AC
Gig Harbor Light Sport Flying Club Aeronca 11AC · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Tacoma Narrows Airport (TIW) to Tacoma Narrows Airport (TIW)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14CA229
- 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
Aeronca 11AC
- Aircraft type
- Aeronca 11
- 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
- N9791E
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tacoma Narrows Airport (TIW), Tacoma, WATo Tacoma Narrows Airport (TIW), Tacoma, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 68 years (built 1946)
- 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
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that the student was practicing stop-and-go landings in the tail-wheel equipped airplane. The student had just completed two takeoffs, and the roll outs on landing were satisfactory with a little help from the flight instructor. On the third landing, the airplane was about halfway through the roll out to stop when the student suddenly pushed on the right rudder. The flight instructor immediately applied left rudder and brake, called for an addition of power, reached for the throttle, and pushed on it. The airplane straightened out, but was in the grass beside the runway. The airplane became airborne, and subsequently collided with a runway light in its path. After the airplane hit the runway light, the flight instructor flew over the runway, landed, and taxied back to the hangar. The bottom of the airframe sustained substantial damage. The flight instructor reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The student pilot's improper application of rudder resulted in a loss of control during the landing roll and the flight instructor's inadequate oversight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14CA229
- Event ID
- 20140605X22643
- Case number
- WPR14CA229
- 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: 0ecf4e6180f946d7ce51ed76aeec9079d1a86acf540b0eeb4fb13f7ad421cb20; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:44:55.998Z.