GAA16CA252 · Piper PA 20 150
Piper PA 20 150 · Accident: nose over/nose down during takeoff
From Lake Hood Seaplane Base (PALH) to West Cook Inlet, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA252
- 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 20 150
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-20
- 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
- N5589H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake Hood Seaplane Base (PALH), Anchorage, AKTo West Cook Inlet, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 65 years (built 1951)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot of the tailwheel landing gear-equipped airplane, he took off from grassy, wet, down sloping terrain. He recalled that he walked the area of intended takeoff and found no obstacles that would prevented a safe takeoff. However, he reported that during the takeoff roll, he kept the airplane tailwheel off of the ground, while rolling down slope, and the airplane main landing gear wheels rolled over a patch of mud creating a pivot point, and the airplane nosed over. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the vertical stabilizer, rudder, and wing struts.
The pilot reported that there were not any mechanical malfunctions or anomalies with any portion of the airplane, prior to the takeoff roll that would have precluded normal flight operations.
Probable cause
The pilot's selection of an unsuitable takeoff area resulting in an airplane nose over during the takeoff roll.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA252
- Event ID
- 20160523X64922
- Case number
- GAA16CA252
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2016-05-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 12bd5c598ba383cf879e63a460e6284a28752b574ec5e5d8ad9189e3c44e70f6; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:25:26.218Z.