WPR15LA136 · Piper PA30
Piper PA30 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From 025 · Shelter Cove, CA to Red Bluff Municipal Airport (RBL)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15LA136
- 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 PA30
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA30
- 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
- N8403Y
- Operator
- Robert A Blair · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 025 · Shelter Cove, CATo Red Bluff Municipal Airport (RBL), Red Bluff, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1967)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, after the airplane touched down and he applied the brakes, the airplane swerved 90 degrees right. He then released the brakes and applied aileron and rudder inputs to correct to the left. Despite the pilot's attempts to regain directional control, the airplane continued to turn right, slid sideways off the runway, went over a berm, and then continued about 40 ft down a 45-degree embankment, which resulted in the collapse of the landing gear and substantial damage to the fuselage. A postaccident examination of the airplane's wheel and brake system did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Wind was reported to be calm at the time of the accident. The pilot reported that he did not hold a multiengine rating and that he had a total of 3 hours in the accident airplane make and model.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during the landing roll, which resulted in a runway excursion and collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15LA136
- Event ID
- 20150330X23654
- Case number
- WPR15LA136
- 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: 91f3c0b685ce499a2d66e5a6467ade39565c9f20096fbef7bb8b1cac4ede5e18; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:11:22.861Z.