WPR25LA185 · Silvaire LUSCOMBE 8A
Silvaire LUSCOMBE 8A · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Petaluma Municipal Airport (O69) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR25LA185
- 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
Silvaire LUSCOMBE 8A
- Aircraft type
- Silvaire LUSCOMBE 8
- 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
- N28545
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Petaluma Municipal Airport (O69), Petaluma, CATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 85 years (built 1940)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- 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 of a tailwheel equipped airplane reported that after performing a wheel landing, the tailwheel settled onto the runway. Shortly after, the airplane encountered a strong gust of wind or dust devil, which turned the airplane about 90° to the left. Subsequently, the airplane exited the left side of the runway, traveled down an embankment, and both main landing gear collapsed before the airplane came to rest upright. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing. The pilot reported there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airframe or the engine that would have precluded normal operation. At the time of the accident, the pilot was landing the airplane on runway 31 with wind from 270° at 10 knots, gusting to 15 knots. One witness characterized the wind as a spiraling wind with extreme lift.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of directional control during landing roll following an encounter with a dust devil.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR25LA185
- Event ID
- 20250623200372
- Case number
- WPR25LA185
- 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: b05ec5e055e644ad4f9581bb5e9592f3fe746af89ad34d03104f2046942c48a3; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:59:36.026Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure. The identifier is written with a zero and a K prefix; Petaluma Municipal Airport is O69 (letter O), matching the recorded city.