WPR15FA062 · Piper PA 18-150 A150
Piper PA 18-150 A150 · Accident: abrupt maneuver while maneuvering
From Ronan Airport (7S0) to Ronan Airport (7S0)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15FA062
- 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
- 1 · 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 A150
- 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
- N5989Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ronan Airport (7S0), Ronan, MTTo Ronan Airport (7S0), Ronan, MT
- Aircraft age
- About 49 years (built 1965)
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Abrupt maneuver
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was conducting a personal flight around the local area; the passenger had purchased the airplane about 6 weeks before the accident. After performing a series of low-level maneuvers, the pilot told the passenger that he saw a coyote, and he then performed a wingover maneuver. The airplane banked left, and the pilot pulled up. When the airplane was about 20 ft away from a hillside, the pilot stated that he did not think the airplane was going to clear the terrain. Shortly thereafter, the airplane struck the hillside. After the accident, the passenger reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
The wreckage was located on a steep easterly facing hillside about 100 ft below the peak. Ground scar analysis, impact signatures, and wreckage fragmentation patterns revealed that the airplane impacted terrain in a left bank on about a 200-degree heading.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain clearance from terrain while performing an intentional, abrupt low-level maneuver.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15FA062
- Event ID
- 20141217X21639
- Case number
- WPR15FA062
- 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: d53490ce20329b7787c22b6b952f3812c3279c8581fd401e77346662f5e98cb8; retrieved 2026-09-14T17:29:48.403Z.