ANC20CA082 · Piper PA 20
Piper PA 20 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Talkeetna Airport (PATK) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC20CA082
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 20
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-20
- 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
- N1526A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Talkeetna Airport (PATK), Talkeetna, AKTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 69 years (built 1951)
- 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 · landing roll
- 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 on ground
- 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 commercial pilot reported that he was practicing landings in the tailwheel-equipped airplane to gain more experience in that model while flying in the right seat. He hired a flight instructor who was experienced in the model airplane to provide instruction from the left seat. During the pilot’s second flight in the airplane, while he was performing a 3-point landing, the airplane bounced slightly on the asphalt runway. After bouncing, the tailwheel shimmied, and the airplane immediately ground looped to the right and the left wing and horizontal stabilizer impacted the surface, which resulted in substantial damage. The flight instructor reported that the pilot was acting as pilot-in-command for the entire flight, and that she was not providing instruction, but rather allowing the pilot to gain flight time from the right seat. During the final approach, she observed that the airplane was about 5 knots fast before the 3-point landing. When the airplane touched down it bounced and then settled down while in a slight right yaw. The airplane immediately turned right upon touch down and the pilot at the controls attempted to correct with left brake, but the left wing impacted the runway. The pilot had a tailwheel endorsement, a flight instructor certificate and was current for flying as a pilot-in-command. He reported that he was obtaining right seat flight time so that he could instruct in the same model of airplane. The tailwheel was examined by a mechanic after the accident and determined to function properly.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain directional control during the landing roll, which resulted in a ground-loop.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC20CA082
- Event ID
- 20200819X75811
- Case number
- ANC20CA082
- 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, 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: 1cbc996747057818506a175bcae06751de6b5c996c7d962e2037ff2bcbd41459; retrieved 2026-09-16T12:50:23.371Z.