WPR15LA126 · Piper PA 18-150
Piper PA 18-150 · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure while maneuvering
From Pine Mountain Lake Airport (E45) to Pine Mountain Lake Airport (E45)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15LA126
- 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
- N5385Y
- Operator
- Tarasievich Daniel
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pine Mountain Lake Airport (E45), Groveland, CATo Pine Mountain Lake Airport (E45), Groveland, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1964)
- 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
- Flight control system malfunction/failure
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the private pilot, during the personal flight in the airplane, he applied back pressure to the flight control stick to climb the airplane over an approaching hill, but the control stick separated at the stub. The pilot attempted to reinsert the control stick onto the stub while simultaneously adding power to climb, but the airplane impacted terrain, slid, and came to rest along the hillside.
Postaccident examination of the flight control stick revealed that the through bolt that secured the control stick to the stub was still secured to the control stick but not to the stub. There was no damage or deformation to the control stick or through bolt. Given the lack of damage to the flight control stick and through bolt, it is likely that the control stick was not properly installed during a maintenance activity; however, the maintenance logbook entries did not specify when the control stick was last removed.
Probable cause
The separation of the flight control stick from the stub due to its improper installation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15LA126
- Event ID
- 20150308X30905
- Case number
- WPR15LA126
- 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: 895f43af3912a12b790e85834d67d3ad6815e8a431bb7d9faf41a3ab6d0abfed; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:07:53.276Z.