WPR14LA265 · Piper PA 18-135
Piper PA 18-135 · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Ames Airport (21OG) to Ames Airport (21OG)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14LA265
- 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 18-135
- 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
- N949JP
- Operator
- Curtright William Ames
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ames Airport (21OG), Turner, ORTo Ames Airport (21OG), Turner, OR
- Aircraft age
- About 61 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
- 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
- Landing gear collapse
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the amphibious float-equipped airplane was landing at his private airstrip following a personal local flight. During the landing roll, the left amphibious float's main wheel collapsed/retracted. The pilot said following the collapse of the wheel the airplane pulled hard to the left, which he was not able to control with right brake and rudder. The airplane departed the runway to the left, the float support structure collapsed, and the right wing was substantially damaged when it struck the ground.
Prior to the collapse of the left wheel the pilot reported no known mechanical problems with the airplane.
Probable cause
The collapse of the left main landing gear during landing roll for reasons that could not be determined because the pilot would not make the airplane available for a postaccident examination.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14LA265
- Event ID
- 20140623X22843
- Case number
- WPR14LA265
- 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: 009fa2176caf4631354daa05191479526f309af6ec3f39e06ac77612671046e8; retrieved 2026-09-16T00:25:53.971Z.