WPR19LA105 · Piper PA18 105 SPECIA
Piper PA18 105 SPECIA · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From Port of Poulsbo Marina Moorage Seaplane Base (PUL) to Copalis State Airport (S16)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR19LA105
- 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 PA18 105 SPECIA
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA18
- 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
- N215T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Port of Poulsbo Marina Moorage Seaplane Base (PUL), Puyallup, WATo Copalis State Airport (S16), Copalis, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 67 years (built 1952)
- 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
- 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot, who was the owner of the airplane, was conducting a personal cross-country flight to an airport that was a designated section of a sandy ocean beach. Most of the flight was conducted at an altitude of about 2,300 ft, and most of the underlying enroute terrain was inhospitable for landing. The pilot reported that, about 90 minutes into the flight, and 5 minutes after conducting a series of low altitude maneuvers and climbing to about 1,000 ft above the ground, the engine began running roughly and losing power. He said that he activated the carburetor heat, but that did not improve the situation, and he landed the airplane on a logging road in a forest clearing, during which the airplane impacted stumps and debris, resulting in substantial damage.
Examination revealed that the airplane was destroyed by fire. There was no evidence of any pre-impact failures or malfunctions. Fire and impact damage prevented determination of the pre-accident condition or functionality of any of the engine components, or of the engine itself. Temperature and dew point values from an airport located about 9.5 miles from the accident site on a graph of carburetor icing potential indicated the potential for serious icing at cruise power.
The altitude, speed, and ground track traces of the approach to the logging road, which included level-offs and speed increases, were consistent with a normal traffic pattern flown with an engine developing sufficient power for the entirety of the approach. The fact that both propeller blades were damaged, as well as their damage patterns, also indicated that the engine was developing power.
Based on the available information, the circumstances under which the pilot conducted the off-airport landing could not be determined.
Probable cause
An off-airport landing under circumstances that could not be determined based on the available information, which resulted in substantial damage to the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR19LA105
- Event ID
- 20190403X40612
- Case number
- WPR19LA105
- 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, cause areas. 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: b83d9075058caeafa401f9e02e912df95f33f70d187a75b0219691dde632ab1f; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:42:59.805Z.