GAA17CA503 · Piper PA 28 161
Piper PA 28 161 · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Laughlin Bullhead International Airport (IFP) to Sun Valley Airport (A20)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA17CA503
- 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 28 161
- 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
- N536CA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Laughlin Bullhead International Airport (IFP), Bullhead City, AZTo Sun Valley Airport (A20), Mohave, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 29 years (built 1988)
- 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
- Abnormal runway contact
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, during the approach to the desert airport, the wind had increased to about 15 knots, and it was gusting. He reported that, during landing, "a gust of wind hit me from the opposite direction of flight causing a stall." The airplane stalled about 8 ft above the runway and landed hard.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the engine mounts.
The METAR at the nearest airport (7 miles from accident airport) reported that, about the time of the accident, the wind was from 210° at 4 knots. An hour later, the METAR reported that the wind was 10 knots, gusting to 17 knots.
The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper airspeed and pitch control during landing in variable, gusting wind conditions, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA17CA503
- Event ID
- 20170822X64033
- Case number
- GAA17CA503
- 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, coordinates. 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: f6ada40a7db3f78221eb6f0ca4996257fb9737e01a6ee6b5fa1304f410023a87; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:44:32.364Z.