WPR25LA120 · Piper PA-22
Piper PA-22 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From KDLS · Dallesport, WA to Madras Municipal Airport (S33)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR25LA120
- 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-22
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-22
- 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
- N1418C
- Operator
- Christian Morris
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From KDLS · Dallesport, WATo Madras Municipal Airport (S33), Madras, OR
- Aircraft age
- About 72 years (built 1953)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
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 prior to landing in the tailwheel equipped airplane, he obtained the current weather of the destination airport, which included the current wind. During the final approach to land the wind was a lot stronger and gustier than expected. He advanced the throttle to make a crosswind correction to the left. About 10 ft above the runway the pilot set up for a three-point landing. Shortly after landing, the left wing began to rise, and the nose stared to turn to the right. Subsequently, the airplane quickly turned to the right and the right wing tip and right elevator impacted the runway, which resulted in substantial damage. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that could have precluded normal operation. At the time of the accident, the pilot was landing on runway 16, with the wind from 150° at 16 knots, gusting to 21 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of control during landing roll with gusty winds.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR25LA120
- Event ID
- 20250327199924
- Case number
- WPR25LA120
- 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: ec7a87b6181b21133089311695c1bbc490be1fab04c57c4731689014cf034dad; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:46:30.375Z.