WPR18LA005 · Piper PA 24-250
Piper PA 24-250 · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during landing
From Stark's Twin Oaks Airpark (7S3) to Stark's Twin Oaks Airpark (7S3)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR18LA005
- 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 24-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N7892P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stark's Twin Oaks Airpark (7S3), Hillsboro, ORTo Stark's Twin Oaks Airpark (7S3), Hillsboro, OR
- Aircraft age
- About 55 years (built 1962)
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
As the student pilot was approaching the runway for a practice soft-field, full-stop landing, the airplane descended faster than expected and the nose pitched up. The airplane's airspeed was slow, and the flight instructor called for a go-around. During the go-around, the flight instructor told the student pilot to apply power faster. Subsequently, the airplane exceeded its critical angle of attack and aerodynamically stalled, settled toward the ground, struck the ground hard short of the runway, and then bounced onto the runway, sustaining substantial damage to the fuselage and wings. The accident might have been avoided if the flight instructor had intervened or taken control of the airplane earlier in the sequence.
Probable cause
The student's pilot’s failure to maintain adequate airspeed during approach and subsequent exceedance of the critical angle of attack during a go-around, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and a subsequent hard landing. Contributing to the accident was the flight instructor's delayed remedial action during the attempted go-around.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR18LA005
- Event ID
- 20171005X93025
- Case number
- WPR18LA005
- 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: 4786b81dec1d2c39da1e54bfd5c1f699f260d8744c46d8496c21d5a4cd06ac96; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:55:04.788Z.