GAA15CA107 · Piper PA 18A 150
Walla Walla University Piper PA 18A 150 · Accident: nose over/nose down during landing
From Little Goose State Airport (16W) to Hay, WA
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA15CA107
- 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 18A 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
- N7860D
- Operator
- Walla Walla University
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Little Goose State Airport (16W), STARBUCK, WATo Hay, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 58 years (built 1957)
- 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
- Nose over/nose down
- 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 rated pilot and flight instructor were practicing off airport landings in unimproved areas in the tailwheel equipped airplane. After two evaluation passes, the pilot landed. The pilot reported that during the rollout the airplane had oscillations around the lateral axis and the pilot applied the brakes. The flight instructor also applied brake pressure during the landing roll. The airplane nosed over and came to rest inverted. The airplane sustained substantial damage to right wing strut, vertical stabilizer, and rudder. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation.
The pilot reported the accident may have been avoidable with better communication and transfer of controls with the flight instructor.
Probable cause
The pilot's and flight instructor's improper brake application during the landing roll. Contributing to the accident was the flight instructor's failure to make a positive transfer of controls.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA15CA107
- Event ID
- 20150605X12418
- Case number
- GAA15CA107
- 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: ff3fc98d95595eceda5914056dc0868176ecf831cf24a74ce1ab4e7a4f8c9202; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:23:31.219Z.