NYC94LA061 · Piper PA-32-300
Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC94LA061
- 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
- N2598Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Hopedale, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
THIS WAS A TRAINING FLIGHT TO ALLOW A RATED STUDENT PILOT (RSP) TO BUILD FLIGHT TIME IN THE AIRPLANE WITH A CERTIFIED FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR (CFI). AFTER DEPARTURE, THE FLIGHT CONTINUED FOR ABOUT 30 MINUTES IN THE LOCAL AREA. DURING THE RETURN FLIGHT TO THE AIRPORT, WHILE ON A LONG FINAL TO THE RUNWAY, THE CFI GAVE THE RSP A FORCED LANDING. THE RSP BELIEVED THAT THEY WERE TOO HIGH FOR THE RUNWAY AND PLACED THE AIRPLANE IN A SLIP TO LOSE ALTITUDE. WHEN THE RSP RESUMED A NORMAL GLIDE HE DETERMINED THAT THE AIRPLANE WAS BELOW AN ACCEPTABLE GLIDE PATH TO MAKE THE RUNWAY. DURING A GO-AROUND INITIATED BY THE RSP, THE AIRPLANE STRUCK A TREE. THE CFI TOOK OVER THE CONTROLS OF THE AIRPLANE, COMPLETED A 360 DEGREE TURN, AND LANDED THE AIRPLANE.
Probable cause
the certified flight instructor's delay in taking remedial action by not initiating the go-around, resulting in the in-flight collision with the tree.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC94LA061
- Event ID
- 20001206X00985
- Case number
- NYC94LA061
- 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: f69edc5313169b1b96b646d555ce7b7ee9ce42869465d39f4312793ea92ac94c; retrieved 2026-09-23T01:13:33.714Z.