GAA17CA157 · Piper PA 28-140
Piper PA 28-140 · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From Mountain Home Municipal Airport (U76) to Mountain Home Municipal Airport (U76)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA17CA157
- 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 28-140
- 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
- N4404T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mountain Home Municipal Airport (U76), Mountain Home, IDTo Mountain Home Municipal Airport (U76), Mountain Home, ID
- Aircraft age
- About 45 years (built 1972)
- 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 · aborted after 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- 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 › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot in the tricycle-gear-equipped airplane reported that he was flying a solo cross-country flight and landed on the 60-ft-wide asphalt runway. He recalled that there were 4-ft-high snow berm that paralleled the edges of the runway. When he touched down, he applied the brakes, and the airplane yawed to the left. In fear of striking the snow berm, he initiated a go around and rotated about 65 kts. The airplane climbed about 2 ft above the runway, but the left main landing gear wheel struck the snow berm on the left side of the runway. The left tire and brake assembly separated from the airplane, and the airplane came to rest in the snow-covered safety area left of the runway. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing ribs and aileron.
The student reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s failure to maintain directional control and to maintain clearance from a snow berm during the aborted landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA17CA157
- Event ID
- 20160919X20225
- Case number
- GAA17CA157
- 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: 65c539028c995b433482432790abddf437b4824e5d8f60990a9b31033f006d4e; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:16:52.446Z.