CEN17LA204 · Aviat Aircraft Inc A-1B
Aviat Aircraft Inc A-1B · Accident: nose over/nose down during landing
From Rhinelander Oneida County Airport (RHI) to Tomahawk Lake, WI
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA204
- 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
Aviat Aircraft Inc A-1B
- Aircraft type
- Aviat A-1
- 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
- N71JA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rhinelander Oneida County Airport (RHI), Rhinelander, WITo Tomahawk Lake, WI
- Aircraft age
- About 13 years (built 2004)
- 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 · flare/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
- 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 was conducting a personal flight in the float-equipped airplane and was landing on a lake with the wheels and water rudders up. The pilot stated that the winds were calm to 6 knots and that the water surface exhibited some minor ripples. The landing was made toward the northwest, with the flaps retracted, at a landing speed of 70-80 mph. The pilot did not recall the touchdown. A witness reported seeing the airplane come within 5 ft of the lake surface, then climb to 15 ft above the lake before it descended and touched down on the lake. The witness stated that the airplane nosed over shortly after it touched down. The airplane sustained substantial damage to both wings and the support struts. The pilot stated that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane during the flight. Based on available weather data, the pilot likely landed with a 3-4 kt tailwind. However, the pilot should have been able to adequately respond to the slight tailwind during landing. Given the available information, the pilot likely did not maintain a proper approach path, which resulted in the airplane's hard landing and nose over.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain a proper approach path, which resulted in the airplane’s hard landing and nose over after the water landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA204
- Event ID
- 20170531X43028
- Case number
- CEN17LA204
- 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: 71602918f3db4b97f2c81b78a5dbca7de0b60ba2fe5a9093185a0198722e7d36; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:20:48.419Z.