CEN18TA330 · Piper J3C 65
Piper J3C 65 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Polly Ranch Airport (7XS0) to Polly Ranch Airport (7XS0)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18TA330
- 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
- 0
- 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 J3C 65
- Aircraft type
- Piper J3
- 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
- N42218
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Polly Ranch Airport (7XS0), Friendswood, TXTo Polly Ranch Airport (7XS0), Friendswood, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 73 years (built 1945)
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the personal flight, the commercial pilot completed several uneventful touch-and-go landings at two nearby airports, then returned and landed on the runway with a right crosswind at 9 knots. As the airplane slowed on the runway, it weathervaned into the wind and veered to the right. The pilot was unable to steer with the tailwheel, and the airplane exited the right side of the runway and collided with a tree.
A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the tailwheel locking mechanism pins were worn and degraded. The locking mechanism could not withstand even a small amount of side pressure; as pressure was applied to the tailwheel, the locking mechanism would unlock and the tailwheel would swivel out of alignment.
It is likely that, due to the degraded locking pins, the tailwheel became unlocked before the final landing and was out of alignment during the landing roll, which precluded the pilot from regaining directional control. It is the pilot's responsibility to ensure that the airplane is in a safe condition for flight; in this case, the pilot did not ensure that the tailwheel locking mechanism was in good working condition before he decided to conduct the flight.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to conduct a flight in an airplane that had a tailwheel with degraded locking pins, which allowed the tailwheel to unlock and swivel out of alignment and precluded the pilot from regaining directional control on the ground during a crosswind landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18TA330
- Event ID
- 20180814X45147
- Case number
- CEN18TA330
- 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: 72d7fc530edc51b833c04c49c12192c08a81a1cb1a5539f1613f72038fd45244; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:05:37.260Z.