GAA15CA007 · Aviat A1 - B
Aviat A1 - B · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Great Falls International Airport (GTF) to Afton Municipal Airport (AFO)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA15CA007
- 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
Aviat A1 - B
- Aircraft type
- Aviat A1
- 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
- C-FTAD
- Operator
- Douglass Miller Tadman
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Great Falls International Airport (GTF), Great Falls, MTTo Afton Municipal Airport (AFO), Afton, WY
- Aircraft age
- About 14 years (built 2001)
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was flying a cross-country flight under visual flight rules in a tailwheel equipped airplane. During the final approach to a full stop landing, the pilot reported that he flared too high and as a result the airplane bounced and veered to the right. The pilot applied left rudder but was unable to stop the airplane from departing the runway to the right. During the runway excursion the airplane impacted a snow pile adjacent to the runway and nosed over. The pilot reported that he typically lands on soft runway surfaces less than 2,000 ft. in length and suspected that his perception during the flare may have been impacted while landing on this 7,025 ft. runway.
The pilot did not observe any preimpact mechanical malfunctions with the airplane and the winds were reporting calm during the time of the accident. Examination of the airplane revealed substantial damage to the right wing.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA15CA007
- Event ID
- 20150316X42223
- Case number
- GAA15CA007
- 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: f3a28ca21b72932e369174f0751a44aa43715847e1876d6d97b63836d3dc7209; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:09:23.265Z.