GAA16CA004 · Piper PA 18-150 A150
Piper PA 18-150 A150 · Accident: nose over/nose down during landing
From Wolf Lake Airport (4AK6) to Wolf Lake Airport (4AK6)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA004
- 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 18-150 A150
- 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
- N8996Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wolf Lake Airport (4AK6), Palmer, AKTo Wolf Lake Airport (4AK6), Palmer, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 41 years (built 1974)
- 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 pilot reported that he was practicing off airport landings on a gravel bar, as part of a backcountry flying course, with a company safety pilot in the rear seat. During the landing roll and as the airplane approached the end of the gravel bar, he applied the brakes and the airplane nosed over.
The pilot reported that there were no pre-impact mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right forward lift strut and the empennage.
Probable cause
The pilot's excessive brake application during landing, which resulted in a nose-over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA004
- Event ID
- 20151006X63107
- Case number
- GAA16CA004
- 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 2015-10-02.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 325c31a1574cbb9c86c9442dcb091bac5680f3582b960090f4ea77ee72def23e; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:51:54.071Z.