WPR20LA314 · Piper PA30
Piper PA30 · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20LA314
- 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 PA30
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA30
- 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
- N7669Y
- Operator
- G & A O'Connor
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC), Anchorage, AKTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 55 years (built 1965)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Abnormal runway contact
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was seated in the right seat and the pilot-rated passenger of a twin-engine airplane was in the left seat. During the approach for landing, the pilot had his hand on the throttles and was providing input on the flight controls. The pilot-rated passenger reported that she also was giving some input on the controls with the pilot coaching her. The pilot reported that before landing, he asked the passenger to assure that her feet were not on the pedals. The passenger reported that on touchdown, the airplane bounced, and she released her hands from the controls so that she would not interfere with the pilot’s actions. The pilot reported that after the airplane touched down the second time, the airplane veered to the left. He added full right rudder input then added full power to the left engine in an attempt to regain control. Braking action is not available from the right seat position. Despite his actions the airplane exited the left side of the runway and came to rest in a ditch. The aft empennage separated, and the wings were substantially damaged. The extent of damage was consistent with a hard landing. The brakes were not examined.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper flare which resulted in a hard bounced landing and runway excursion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20LA314
- Event ID
- 20200922X40400
- Case number
- WPR20LA314
- 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, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2020-09-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 85fd14d3ebe9c743781c1db74c526b0655539af9a3164dc70e801c0deae3d010; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:05:48.600Z.