According to the pilot receiving instruction during instrument training, she and the flight instructor noted that the Piper PA-28’s left brake was less effective than the right brake during landing.
Following the training, she returned to her home airport in Oregon, Wisconsin, and during landing on the wet, grass runway, she executed a go-around because there was insufficient runway to safely stop the airplane.
During the second landing, the plane touched down with about two-thirds of the 2,600-foot-long runway remaining. During the landing roll, the pilot ensured that the throttle was in the idle position, and she retracted the flaps and applied aft pressure to the yoke. She applied the foot brakes and then the hand brake and again noted that the left brake was less effective than the right brake, and the airplane continued to slide on the wet grass. The airplane overran the runway and hit a drainage culvert.
The right wing then hit a barn, and the left wing hit a trailer. The airplane sustained substantial damage to both wing’s spars and ribs.
According to the FAA aviation safety inspector who examined the airplane, there was a pool of hydraulic fluid on the ground that appeared to be consistent with an O-ring failure or displacement. He affirmed that, although degraded, the brake would still have been functional but would have required more input by the pilot to build pressure within the brake line.
Probable cause: The pilot’s improper decision to take off with a known brake malfunction, which resulted in a collision with a barn during landing on a wet runway.
NTSB Identification: GAA18CA432
This July 2018 accident report is provided by the National Transportation Safety Board. Published as an educational tool, it is intended to help pilots learn from the misfortunes of others.
The mechanical issue could have been an important factor in her over run. Whether it was the short, wet grass of ineffective braking due to a known maintenance problem is difficult to tell. According to the Pilot/Operator report in the NTSB Docket the left brake reservoir was topped of just two days prior to the accident, and it was known that it was still ‘soft’. How “soft”? Dunno. Other factors were at play. The reported runway length is 2600′. However, based on nearly identical distance measurements using the aerial images provided in Foreflight and Google Earth it looks like the actual runway surface is about 200′ shorter than advertised. By those images and app measurement tools, the absolute distance from the western wall of a 20′ tall hangar located on the east end of the runway grass to the ditch on the west is about 2400′. So is 2400′ “useable”? Not likely. A third of the measured runway length from the two app images would leave only 1600′ remaining to the wall. That’s enough to land on a dry, level, paved runway in no wind conditions. But margins are important. The pilot didn’t have good margins.
Probable Cause? Maybe landing a third of the way down a wet grass runway had more to do with it than weak brakes. Brakes sure don’t work well on wet grass. I guess our investigator here had little, or no experience, with wet grass. Silly probable cause.
Instrument Pilot training? Pilot needs remedial training at the Private Pilot level.