WPR20LA110 · Piper PA22 108
Piper PA22 108 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Ralph Wenz Field (PNA) to Ralph Wenz Field (PNA)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20LA110
- 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 PA22 108
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA22
- 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
- N4837Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ralph Wenz Field (PNA), Pinedale, WYTo Ralph Wenz Field (PNA), Pinedale, WY
- Aircraft age
- About 59 years (built 1961)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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 in flight
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot reported that he was drifting to the right while on approach to land when the flight instructor took over controls. The flight instructor reported that he applied rudder control inputs; however, the rudder pedals didn’t move for about 6 to 7 seconds and the airplane did not align with the runway. The flight instructor reported that he thought that the glareshield mounted tachometer timing box could have been trapped behind the rudder pedals. The tachometer timing box was located at the accident site and had been thrown from the wreckage. A portion of the instrument panel mounted tachometer housing was found behind the rudder pedals. Further examination of the tachometer gauge revealed damage consisted with impact damage as a result of the accident and did not appear to have interfered with the movement of the rudder pedals. Examination revealed no anomalies with the airframe that would have precluded normal operation. Multiple examinations of the rudder system did not reveal any evidence of a rudder malfunction or jam.
Probable cause
A loss of airplane control during approach for reasons that could not be determined based on available evidence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20LA110
- Event ID
- 20200317X10410
- Case number
- WPR20LA110
- 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: cf94d1c9ad97797c18b08d09789a1463d09fe97aaaaa4e79cd8f7f214e4322bb; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:19:03.685Z.