CEN24LA373 · Piper PA-18-150
Colorado Mesa University Piper PA-18-150 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Grand Junction Regional Airport (GJT) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN24LA373
- 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
- N4155W
- Operator
- Colorado Mesa University
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grand Junction Regional Airport (GJT), Grand Junction, COTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 31 years (built 1993)
- 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 go-around
- 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
- 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 reported that during landing he allowed the airplane to sink faster than intended and it bounced on the main tires. He immediately executed a go-around; however, during the go-around the airplane went off the side of the runway, and struck thick bushes, terrain and rocks before gaining altitude. Just before gaining altitude, the airplane struck a large rock which damaged the right main landing gear. During the subsequent landing, the right main landing gear collapsed, and the airplane’s nose and right wing struck the ground. The airplane then swung to the right and the left wing struck the ground. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of aircraft control during a bounced landing and go-around, during which the right main landing gear struck a large rock, which damaged it such that it collapsed during the following landing, which caused the airplane to impact the ground resulting in substantial damage to the left wing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN24LA373
- Event ID
- 20240928195218
- Case number
- CEN24LA373
- 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: ce196fc5ffc8cfdbdecd6e733a3825f6bb5d31e048a5dfce628bb22f82b485f9; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:19:44.417Z.