WPR25LA074 · Piper PA-18-150
State of Montana Piper PA-18-150 · Accident: nose over/nose down during takeoff
From Dillon Airport (DLN) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR25LA074
- 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
- Government
- 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
- N4644Y
- Operator
- State of Montana
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dillon Airport (DLN), Dillon, MTTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 54 years (built 1971)
- 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
- Nose over/nose down
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
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 of a tail wheel equipped airplane reported that due to carburetor icing he was forced to land on a mountain ridge. After clearing snow and sagebrush to make a runway, the pilot attempted to depart, but during the takeoff roll the airplane veered right into deep snow and sagebrush. The airplane nosed over and came to rest inverted, which resulted in substantial damage to the wing struts, rudder and vertical stabilizer. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during takeoff, which resulted in an impact with deep snow and vegetation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR25LA074
- Event ID
- 20250107199517
- Case number
- WPR25LA074
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: 38383d3ee6797f28c457cf8e95a420e3e4301c1f4357c364a28cdd4cd9b673ba; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:35:08.042Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure. State abbreviation is duplicated in the city label; DLN is Dillon Airport, Dillon, MT.