When we looked at the 100 most recent accidents for the Archer/Cherokee 180 series—50 for each model—we saw some crunch causes we expected and a few we didn’t.
First, in an airplane often used as a trainer, we expected to see a significant number of landing-related accidents. We did. Thirty percent of the airplanes came to grief due to either runway loss of control (RLOC), hard landing, runway overshoot or a botched go around. We didn’t expect to see that of the 15 RLOC accidents; only two were in Cherokee 180s, the rest were Archers. As the airplanes have essentially the same landing gear, we are puzzled as to how the only major difference between the machines—the wing—could have anything to do with the proclivity of Archer pilots versus Cherokee 180 pilots to lose control on rollout.