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GAA19CA184 · Piper PA 16

31 Mar 2019 · Afton, WY, United States

Piper PA 16 · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing

From Afton Municipal Airport (AFO) to Afton Municipal Airport (AFO)

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Event

NTSB case
GAA19CA184
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 16

Aircraft type
Piper PA-16
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
N676SC
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Afton Municipal Airport (AFO), Afton, WYTo Afton Municipal Airport (AFO), Afton, WY
Aircraft age
About 70 years (built 1949)
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 · aborted after 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
Abnormal runway contact
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

The pilot of the tailwheel-equipped airplane reported that, upon landing, the airplane bounced twice and started to veer left. He immediately applied power to go around, but the main landing gear struck a snowbank, and the airplane nosed over.

The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left and right wings.

The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.

Probable cause

The pilot's improper landing flare, which resulted in a bounced landing and loss of directional control and the airplane’s subsequent impact with a snowbank and nose-over during an attempted go-around.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record GAA19CA184
Event ID
20190331X54036
Case number
GAA19CA184
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: 70da68f45eb524b0c97d9be0efbbea6191f9f15e4c944aa3254c5af441027bdc; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:42:12.357Z.