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Atlas / NTSB / WPR22LA321

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event WPR22LA321

2022-08-29 Twin Bridges, Montana, United States Airport · RVF None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Registry · N3268B

FAA Aircraft Registry record.

Make / Model

PIPER PA-22-135

Year of manufacture

1954 · 68 years old at event

Engine

LYCOMING 0-290 SERIES (140 hp)

Seats / Engines

4 seats · 1 engine

ADS-B equipped

Yes — Mode-S A3880C

Registrant of record

JOHNSON RANDALL A

Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The student pilot’s failure to maintain airplane control during an aborted landing, and the flight instructor’s delayed remedial action.

Factual narrative

According to the student pilot, he entered a cross-control slip to the right on short final to descend. About 150 ft agl, the airplane was trimmed for landing with flaps applied, but the nose of the airplane remained oriented to the right of the runway centerline, and he aborted the landing. The student was instructed to lower the nose to increase the airspeed, but the airplane continued to turn right, and the flight instructor came on the flight controls. The flight instructor reported that he immediately reduced the angle of attack and executed standard stall recovery techniques. The airplane continued to descend and touched down on rising unimproved terrain with a left sideload. The left main and the nose landing gear collapsed, and the left wing struck the ground. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing ribs, spar and aileron. Post-accident examination of the airplane’s primary flight controls revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunction or failures 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-Student/instructed pilot
  • Personnel issues-Action/decision-Action-Delayed action-Instructor/check pilot
  • Personnel issues-Psychological-Attention/monitoring-Monitoring other person-Instructor/check pilot

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2022_WPR22LA321.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 (stall). 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 ↗