WPR17LA102 · Piper PA 18A 135
Piper PA 18A 135 · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure during takeoff
From Coeur D'Alene Airport - Pappy Boyington Field (COE) to Coeur D'Alene Airport - Pappy Boyington Field (COE)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR17LA102
- 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 18A 135
- 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
- N245KW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Coeur D'Alene Airport - Pappy Boyington Field (COE), Coeur d'Alene, IDTo Coeur D'Alene Airport - Pappy Boyington Field (COE), Coeur d'Alene, ID
- Aircraft age
- About 64 years (built 1953)
- 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
- Flight control system malfunction/failure
- 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 handling/service
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that, shortly after takeoff for the personal flight, the airplane began to yaw left and that he applied right rudder input in an attempt to regain yaw control; however, the airplane did not respond. The pilot subsequently initiated a forced landing, during which the airplane impacted the ground in a nose-down attitude, and it then came to rest oriented about 90o perpendicular to the runway.
Postaccident examination revealed that the forward right rudder cable, between the front and rear seats, had detached at the rear seat foot pedal connection. The cable had pulled through its swage sleeve, indicating that the swage had not been adequately compressed. The cable appeared to have been recently replaced; however, during a review of maintenance records, no logbook entry was found documenting the replacement.
Probable cause
The loss of yaw control due to an inadequately compressed rudder swage, which resulted from inadequate maintenance and led to the separation of the forward right rudder cable.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR17LA102
- Event ID
- 20170508X05228
- Case number
- WPR17LA102
- 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: 19474a3c493c75381b5298922ff20e27037d99707c67ee51c2e65aa2188cbd76; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:14:45.979Z.