CEN20LA150 · Piper PA 18 150
Piper PA 18 150 · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Bowie, TX to Bowie Municipal Airport (0F2)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20LA150
- 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 PA 18 150
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-18
- 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
- N3670P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bowie, TXTo Bowie Municipal Airport (0F2), Bowie, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 65 years (built 1955)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was taking off on a 310° heading for a personal flight; gusting wind was from 270°. The pilot stated that during the initial climb, he observed a normal ascent rate, so he retracted the flaps. He added that "it felt like a gust [of wind] picked our left wing up," and in response he pushed the control stick to the left twice, but the airplane did not respond. The airplane continued to bank right and descend as the pilot attempted to bring the wings level. As the airplane approached the ground, the pilot pulled the throttle control to idle, then the airplane struck a metal building frame on the northeast side of the field. Postaccident examination of the airplane and flight control systems did not reveal any mechanical malfunction that would have precluded normal operation. It is likely that that pilot did not maintain control of the airplane in gusting wind conditions, resulting in an uncontrolled turn and descent into terrain.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane during takeoff in gusting wind conditions, which resulted in an uncontrolled turn and descent into terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20LA150
- Event ID
- 20200420X92155
- Case number
- CEN20LA150
- 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, coordinates. 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: d41a8ab8c0712474737e9d6aa53b7b6a59a8ebd43c7d30637e5cbd818f281b81; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:29:21.881Z.