BFO94FA034 · Piper PA-28-161
Aero-Tech Services Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From Roadcap Airport (37PA) to Bloomsburg Municipal Airport (N13)
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO94FA034
- 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
- API-reported fatalities
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-28-161
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N28767
- Operator
- Aero-Tech Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Roadcap Airport (37PA), SMOKETOWN, PATo Bloomsburg Municipal Airport (N13), Bloomsburg, PA
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- En route · cruise
- First occurrenceThe 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
- In flight collision with object
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC); Tree(s)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, attempted
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
WHILE ON A VFR FLIGHT, THE PILOT ENCOUNTERED INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS AND THE AIRPLANE IMPACTED A MOUNTAIN TOP AT 1,630 FEET MEAN SEA LEVEL. ACCORDING TO A CO-WORKER WHO WAS FLYING ANOTHER AIRPLANE ON THE SAME ROUTE AND AT THE SAME TIME, THE PILOT OF THE ACCIDENT AIRPLANE STATED OVER THE RADIO THAT HE WAS GOING TO DESCEND TO 1,700 FEET MEAN SEA LEVEL. THAT WAS THE LAST TRANSMISSION THE CO-WORKER RECEIVED FROM THE ACCIDENT AIRPLANE PILOT. POST ACCIDENT EXAMINATION OF THE AIRFRAME AND ENGINE DID NOT REVEAL ANY ANOMALIES.
Probable cause
the pilot attempting visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions and the pilot not maintaining clearance from objects/terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO94FA034
- Event ID
- 20001206X00589
- Case number
- BFO94FA034
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- 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. 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: c6b428ef3e94c254f73170c50fc1af8c9f71ef8c7007355db1d7c7436a36ae31; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:15:43.141Z.