GAA15CA276 · Piper PA 28 161
skyward aviation Piper PA 28 161 · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Santa Monica Municipal Airport (SMO) to Van Nuys Airport (VNY)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA15CA276
- 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 28 161
- 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
- N8258S
- Operator
- Skyward Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Santa Monica Municipal Airport (SMO), Santa Monica, CATo Van Nuys Airport (VNY), Van Nuys, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 34 years (built 1981)
- 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 in flight
- 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 › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot reported that during the landing, as he began to flare, the airplane was, "hit with the first blast of wake turbulence", from a helicopter that was hovering on the helipad to the left of the runway. The airplane landed hard, exited the runway to the right, and collided with a runway sign.
According to the meteorological terminal aviation routine weather report (METAR) at the airport, the temperature was 99 degrees Fahrenheit and the wind was variable at 4 knots.
The helicopter pad was located over 400 feet to the east of the location that the pilot reported encountering the blast of wake turbulence.
Due to the distance of the helicopter pad from the event location, the ambient temperature, and lack of significant wind, it is likely the student pilot encountered thermal related turbulence on short final.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to compensate for turbulence during the landing flare, which resulted in a hard landing and runway excursion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA15CA276
- Event ID
- 20150928X52300
- Case number
- GAA15CA276
- 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: 0be4b134cc8601925994132a323d449ea5e83ef3ea1288ba8cb0206fe95ceb59; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:49:48.983Z.