NYC94LA059 · Piper PA-32-300
Norwood Air Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: on ground/water collision with object during landing
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC94LA059
- 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-32-300
- 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
- N7303R
- Operator
- Norwood Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- 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
- Landing
- 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
- On ground/water collision with object
- 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
- Dual student › Proper alignment, not maintained
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Norwood, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
THE STUDENT PILOT AND FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR WERE LANDING AT NIGHT ON A RUNWAY WHICH WAS 150 FEET WIDE, OF WHICH 95 FEET WERE PLOWED OF SNOW. THEY HAD DEPARTED THE SAME AIRPORT EARLIER THAT DAY. THE RUNWAY LIGHTS WERE ILLUMINATED, BUT WERE LOCATED OUTSIDE THE SNOW COVERED PART OF THE RUNWAY. THE STUDENT ALIGNED THE AIRPLANE WITH THE SNOWED COVERED SECTION. THE INSTRUCTOR CAUTIONED THE STUDENT ABOUT THIS ALIGNMENT DURING THE APPROACH, BUT DID NOT TAKE CORRECTIVE ACTION. THE AIRPLANE COLLIDED WITH THE SNOWBANK, SHEARED THE LANDING GEARS AND BUCKLED THE FUSELAGE.
Probable cause
THE INADEQUATE SUPERVISION BY THE INSTRUCTOR PILOT DURING THE LANDING, RESULTING IN THE IMPROPER RUNWAY ALIGNMENT BY THE STUDENT PILOT, AND THE SUBSEQUENT COLLISION WITH A SNOWBANK. A FACTOR RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WAS THE INCOMPLETE RUNWAY SNOW REMOVAL.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC94LA059
- Event ID
- 20001206X00983
- Case number
- NYC94LA059
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1994-03-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 16d16f8b0f80189a4a4b7f8385974b64f1a417037c8898bfdc60b99a6f8e7987; retrieved 2026-09-23T01:15:18.880Z.