ERA15LA186 · Piper PA-28-235
Piper PA-28-235 · Accident: runway excursion during landing
From Monroe Walton County Airport (D73) to Air Acres Airport (5GA4)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA186
- 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-28-235
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N8803W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Monroe Walton County Airport (D73), Monroe, GATo Air Acres Airport (5GA4), Woodstock, GA
- 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
- 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
- Runway excursion
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport pilot was conducting a personal cross-country flight. The pilot reported that he landed the airplane with the flaps fully extended on the short, wet, turf runway and that the hand-actuated brakes were ineffective at touchdown but that they became effective after he pumped them several times with about 300 ft of runway remaining. A witness at the airport reported that the airplane was "too high for the approach and too fast" and that the airplane touched down midfield and then "bounced-ballooned" down the runway, skidding on the turf each time it touched down. The airplane continued off the departure end of the runway, traveled down an embankment, nosed over, and then came to rest inverted. Intermittent tire skid marks from about midfield (1,000 ft) to the crash site were visible, consistent with the witness's statement.
About 8.5 flight hours before the accident, the brakes were replaced, and the brake fluid system was bled. According to the airplane manufacturer, although the method that the mechanic reported that he used to bleed the brakes was not in accordance with the manufacturer's maintenance manual, it achieved the desired results, and the airplane owner stated that the performance of the brakes since their replacement was satisfactory.
Postaccident examination of the brake handle revealed that there was no pressure when the brake handle was actuated but that brake pressure would build if the handle was pumped. The airplane's brake reservoir was open at the top, and the fill line for the reservoir was well below the top of the container, which would have allowed air in the system to escape. Consequently, during the time the airplane was inverted following the accident, the air that had been in the top of the reservoir was trapped and moved to the highest point in the system, which was the brake calipers. Brake fluid would have continued to leak from the system and been replaced by air until the airplane was returned to the upright position. Because of trapped air in the system, the brakes did not function normally until the air was removed and the fluid replaced when the handle was pumped during postaccident testing.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to attain the proper touchdown point on the short, wet, turf runway. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s use of a high approach speed.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA186
- Event ID
- 20150415X54513
- Case number
- ERA15LA186
- 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, coordinates. 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: 4d96bb950c2dc51125872b4f8da6bc3545f5882c0da1e2b8ab0803d7531bc185; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:13:49.139Z.