BFO94LA046 · Piper PA-32R-300
Piper PA-32R-300 · Accident: undershoot on approach
From Wilmington Airport (ILG) to NJ
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO94LA046
- 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
- 0 · 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-32R-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N23AL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wilmington Airport (ILG), New Castle, DETo NJ
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Undershoot
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Berlin, NJ, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
When the pilot arrived at his destination airport, he circled the airport to inspect the wind sock and runway conditions. The wind sock indicated near calm winds, but appeared to favor runway 05. The pilot said that because the runway is relatively short, he elected to approach and land in such a manner as to have as much runway left as possible. The pilot set up his approach for the runway and on final approach, the airplane's left main landing gear contacted a tree. The airplane veered to the left of the runway and contacted the ground. As the airplane was sliding to a stop, the left wing collided with a utility pole and was severed.
Probable cause
The pilot not maintaining clearance from obstacles (trees) during final approach which resulted in a collision with a tree and a subsequent uncontrolled descent until colliding with the ground.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO94LA046
- Event ID
- 20001206X00712
- Case number
- BFO94LA046
- 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: 8165adcc307710d9f4d82093f1414365c768b8c44801a1196d75b6e7a72bceca; retrieved 2026-09-23T01:19:30.777Z.