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Atlas / NTSB / WPR22LA170

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event WPR22LA170

2022-05-02 Mesa, Arizona, United States Airport · IWA None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Registry · N3390A

FAA Aircraft Registry record.

Make / Model

PIPER PA-22-135

Year of manufacture

1954 · 68 years old at event

Engine

LYCOMING O-290-D2 (140 hp)

Seats / Engines

4 seats · 1 engine

Last airworthiness date

20070206

ADS-B equipped

Yes — Mode-S A3B997

Registrant of record

ENGEN JOHN E

Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during landing, which resulted in a ground loop.

Factual narrative

The pilot of the tailwheel equipped airplane reported that, during an instructional flight practicing landings to a full stop, the airplane veered left, directional control was lost and the left wing and left elevator were substantially damaged when they contacted the runway surface during a ground loop. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database Retrieved: 2026-02-12

NTSB Findings

Hierarchical cause / factor breakdown from the FAA bulk avdata database. Each finding tagged C (Cause) or F (Factor).

  • Personnel issues-Task performance-Use of equip/info-Aircraft control-Pilot
  • Aircraft-Aircraft oper/perf/capability-Performance/control parameters-Directional control-Not attained/maintained

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2022_WPR22LA170.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Related research

What the literature says.

Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (icing). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.

Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗