GAA18CA426 · Piper PA 20 Undesignat
Gateway Tailwheel Club Piper PA 20 Undesignat · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport (MGY) to Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport (MGY)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA18CA426
- 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 20 Undesignat
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-20
- 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
- N7492K
- Operator
- Gateway Tailwheel Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport (MGY), Dayton, OHTo Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport (MGY), Dayton, OH
- Aircraft age
- About 68 years (built 1950)
- 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
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the tailwheel-equipped airplane reported that, during the landing flare, he felt a wind shift push the airplane left of centerline. He applied opposite rudder, but the airplane touched down "skewed" to the right. The airplane then exited the runway to the right and ground looped on an adjacent field.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing.
The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
The pilot reported that the wind was variable at 6 knots at the accident site. He added that, during the short final leg of the approach, the wind was from about 210º and that, during the landing flare, the wind shifted to from about 280º. The airport's automated weather observation station reported that, about 20 minutes before the accident, the wind was from 310º at 9 knots and that, about 30 minutes after the accident, the wind was from 180° at 8 knots. The pilot landed the airplane on runway 20.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for variable crosswind conditions during landing, which resulted in a runway excursion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA18CA426
- Event ID
- 20180714X70326
- Case number
- GAA18CA426
- 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: 357c257011d9dda7c29b285f6a6bb6b01c8e5ac65a5fa2be9a94523f2333b399; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:51:49.118Z.