BFO94FA066 · Piper PA-32R-300
Affordable Leasing Piper PA-32R-300 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From 22G · Elyria, OH to Leesburg Executive Airport (JYO)
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO94FA066
- 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
- 3 · 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
- Unknown
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
- N8685C
- Operator
- Affordable Leasing
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 22G · Elyria, OHTo Leesburg Executive Airport (JYO), Leesburg, VA
- 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 encounter with weather
- 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)
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT DEPARTED INTO MARGINAL VFR WEATHER CONDITIONS LATE AT NIGHT WITHOUT RECEIVING A WEATHER BRIEFING. HE WAS NOT INSTRUMENT RATED. BEFORE DEPARTURE, A WITNESS NOTED THE PILOT LOOKED 'A LITTLE TIRED' AND THAT THERE WAS NO INDICATION OF AN AIRPLANE PROBLEM. RECORDED RADAR DATA, METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS, AND WITNESS STATEMENTS INDICATED THE AIRPLANE ENTERED AN AREA OF CLOUDS, RAIN, AND MODERATE TURBULENCE, ALL OF WHICH WERE FORECAST. RADAR DATA SHOWED THE PLANE HAD ENTERED A RAPID DESCENDING TURN FROM ABOUT 5700' MSL, THEN RADIO AND RADAR CONTACT WERE LOST. AN IN-FLIGHT BREAKUP OF THE AIRPLANE OCCURRED, AND WRECKAGE WAS FOUND OVER A 3/4 MILE AREA. AN EXAM OF THE FRACTURES REVEALED EVIDENCE THAT THE STABILATORS AND LEFT WING FAILED FROM OVERLOAD IN A DOWNWARD DIRECTION, THE RIGHT OUTBOARD WING PANEL FAILED UPWARD FROM OVERLOAD, AND THE VERTICAL STABILIZER HAD FAILED TO THE RIGHT FROM TORSIONAL LOADS. THE AIRPLANE HAD BEEN RECENTLY STRIPPED AND REPAINTED, BUT NO PRE-ACCIDENT MECHANICAL DEFICIENCY WAS FOUND.
Probable cause
VFR FLIGHT BY THE PILOT INTO INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS (IMC), HIS LOSS OF AIRCRAFT CONTROL DUE TO SPATIAL DISORIENTATION, AND EXCEEDING THE DESIGN STRESS LIMITS OF THE AIRCRAFT. FACTORS RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: DARKNESS, THE ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS, AND THE PILOT'S LACK OF INSTRUMENT EXPERIENCE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO94FA066
- Event ID
- 20001206X01038
- Case number
- BFO94FA066
- 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: f59a665822106c79965e2188f166e0e1213f2e585920541923727b183a490f05; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:11:42.408Z.