WPR20CA087 · Piper PA28 161
Piper PA28 161 · Accident: ground collision while taxiing
From Santa Barbara Municipal Airport (SBA) to LBG · Long Beach, CA
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20CA087
- 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 PA28 161
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N8408E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From Santa Barbara Municipal Airport (SBA), Santa Barbara, CATo LBG · Long Beach, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1981)
- 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
- Taxi · to runway
- 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
- Ground collision
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, upon receiving clearance to taxi from air traffic control, he proceeded to taxi onto what he thought was the centerline of the taxiway in nighttime conditions. During the taxi, the airplane suddenly turned right. The pilot stopped the airplane and thought something on the ground had made "the wheel turn." He looked at the right wing but noticed nothing abnormal. After the airplane was airborne, the pilot saw that part of the right wingtip was separated. The pilot continued the flight and landed uneventfully at his destination. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the right wing had sustained substantive structural damage. A portion of the airplane's right wingtip was found underneath a damaged wing on an unoccupied airplane that was parked adjacent to the taxiway. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from a parked airplane during taxi operations at night.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20CA087
- Event ID
- 20200206X43510
- Case number
- WPR20CA087
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2020-01-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1169410aea0784d900237d71065a88fe000c1d6e19e75cc78757aed49d9e0cb0; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:03:04.236Z.