GAA17CA159 · Piper PA22 150
Piper PA22 150 · Accident: nose over/nose down during landing
From Wasilla Airport (IYS) to Big Lake Airport (BGQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA17CA159
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA22 150
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA22
- 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
- N6024D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wasilla Airport (IYS), Wasilla, AKTo Big Lake Airport (BGQ), Big Lake, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 61 years (built 1956)
- 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
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the tailwheel-equipped airplane reported that, after conducting two touch-and-go landings at a nearby airport, he decided to land at a different airport to speak with a friend. He added that everything seemed normal during the touchdown on the snow-covered runway but that the airplane then "abruptly stopped and [nosed] over."
The airplane sustained substantial damage to both wings and the rudder.
The pilot reported that the inside of the left main landing gear and brake was "packed with ice" and had frozen, which prevented the wheel from rotating during the landing roll.
Probable cause
The contamination of snow and ice on the left main landing gear and brake, which prevented the wheel from rolling during touchdown and resulted in a nose-over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA17CA159
- Event ID
- 20170228X43205
- Case number
- GAA17CA159
- 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 2017-02-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ab198f033d2850a8fef9c66d6c0134a93567588f966b03b032c893c654d91e5e; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:02:56.848Z.