Great Lakes Air Piper PA 32 260 accident
Piper PA 32 260 · Accident: hard landing
From Bois Blanc Airport (6Y1) to Cheboygan County Airport (SLH)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA18CA081
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 32 260
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N4887S
- Operator
- Great Lakes Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bois Blanc Airport (6Y1), BOIS BLANC ISLAND, MITo Cheboygan County Airport (SLH), Cheboygan, MI
- Aircraft age
- About 46 years (built 1971)
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, during approach to runway 28, he noticed that the vertical speed indicator showed an increase in the decent rate so he applied full power.
He reported that the airplane landed hard, and he heard a "pop" and believed that the main landing gear tires had failed. The airplane exited the right side of the runway and struck a runway light.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the aft bulkhead, stringer, and skin.
According to the METAR at the accident airport, about the time of the accident the wind was from 230° at 28 kts gusting to 42 kts.
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 failure to maintain the airplane’s rate of descent in gusting wind conditions resulting in a hard landing and runway excursion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA18CA081
- Event ID
- 20171211X60452
- Case number
- GAA18CA081
- 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: e98229adbe5412feec386b057b2a7d864fb1bad08b1443eae0e1967bfc4ad9f7; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:07:34.189Z.