GAA15CA114 · Piper PA 16
Piper PA 16 · Accident: runway excursion during landing
From Hazen Municipal Airport - David Duch Field (6M0) to Unkn · Tollville, AR
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA15CA114
- 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 16
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-16
- 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
- N5735H
- Operator
- Sickel Mason L
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hazen Municipal Airport - David Duch Field (6M0), Hazen, ARTo Unkn · Tollville, AR
- Aircraft age
- About 66 years (built 1949)
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that while on short final to the unlit airstrip; during the flare, he lost sight of the runway and the airplane veered to the right, impacted a rice field, and nosed over. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right wing and lift strut.
The pilot reported there were no pre-impact mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation
The pilot stated that the accident may have been mitigated if he would have landed on a lit runway and conducted a wheel landing instead of a three point landing, which would have allowed him to maintain a visual of the runway until his main wheels where on the ground.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during the landing flare, which resulted in the airplane impacting a rice field and nosing over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA15CA114
- Event ID
- 20150610X05937
- Case number
- GAA15CA114
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2015-06-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 8233bb609ebf3256044f57a9722298ff7e57c1c0e5e38d9d0f5bd0d7fb29f69f; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:24:37.396Z.