GAA18CA269 · Piper PA 18-150
Piper PA 18-150 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Lake Hood Seaplane Base (PALH) to Goose Bay Airport (Z40)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA18CA269
- 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 18-150
- 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
- N2432H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake Hood Seaplane Base (PALH), Anchorage, AKTo Goose Bay Airport (Z40), Goose Bay, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1979)
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- Loss of control on ground
- 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
According to the student pilot in the tailwheel-equipped airplane, during his initial solo flight in the airport traffic pattern, he performed a go-around because "I did not like my approach." Following the next approach, he recalled that the airplane encountered a left crosswind gust when the airplane touched down on the gravel runway. He believed that the wind had shifted, and the airplane's tail was "blown" to the right, and its nose turned to the left. The airplane moved from the crown of the runway onto the down-sloping runway edge, and the tailwheel entered the soft gravel. The right wing tip then struck the ground, and the airplane exited the left side of the runway before it came to rest.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right wing spar.
The nearest METAR, located 9 miles south of the accident site, reported that, about the time of the accident, the wind was from 280° at 7 knots. The airplane landed on runway 8. The pilot reported that the wind at the time of the accident was variable at 6 knots, gusting to 10 knots.
The student reported that, "I should have caught that there had been a wind shift between my touch and go and when I ground looped my aircraft. In preparation for landing a final check of the windsock needs to be done, every time. If there is a crosswind, a wing low approach would have helped avoid losing control of the aircraft when I touched down."
The student reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s failure to maintain directional control during landing with a gusting tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA18CA269
- Event ID
- 20180508X65319
- Case number
- GAA18CA269
- 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: fa9617783d9bf421cf385374b4b2bc1de410ac77233e7ff04e206ac53c9653e0; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:05:09.847Z.