WPR20CA316 · Piper PA 12
Piper PA 12 · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Salem, OR to Pacific City State Airport (KPFC)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20CA316
- 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 12
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-12
- 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
- N7754H
- Operator
- Ricardo Byers
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salem, ORTo Pacific City State Airport (KPFC), Pacific City, OR
- Aircraft age
- About 74 years (built 1946)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the tailwheel-equipped airplane reported that, on touchdown the airplane bounced, touched down a second time and pulled to the right. He attempted to correct with elevator and left brake but was unsuccessful. The airplane subsequently nosed over and came to rest inverted. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the rudder and wing lift strut.
The pilot reported that after the accident, the airplane was righted and with considerable drag and right-turning tendency, the airplane was pushed to a hangar. The pilot stated that he examined the tailwheel assembly and area and did not find any damage. The pilot also removed the main landing gear tires for transport before an examination could be conducted, thus compromising the integrity of the brake assemblies and precluded an accurate postaccdent follow-up examination of the brake system.
Probable cause
A loss of directional control during landing for reasons that could not be determined due to lack of available evidence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20CA316
- Event ID
- 20200923X30413
- Case number
- WPR20CA316
- 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: 7f67867655ed172dae8c07be907a8b9a84cf7e43f2e0a2ad30bfb8fcb336ceb5; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:06:32.320Z.