NYC94LA156 · Piper PA-28R-201
Piper PA-28R-201 · Accident: undershoot on approach
From N38 to N38
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC94LA156
- 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-28R-201
- 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
- N9673C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From N38To N38
- 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
- Pilot in command › Distance/altitude, misjudged
- Pilot in command › Impairment(alcohol)
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT AND PASSENGER DEPARTED ON A LOCAL FLIGHT AT ABOUT 0300 EDT. THE MANAGER OF A FIXED BASE OPERATOR (FBO) AT THE AIRPORT HEARD THE AIRPLANE RETURN AND THOUGHT IT ENTERED A DOWNWIND TO LAND. AT ABOUT 0329, HE HEARD THE ENGINE POWER INCREASE, THEN HEARD A 'THUD.' DUE TO INJURIES, THE PILOT DID NOT REMEMBER THE OCCURRENCE. THERE WAS EVIDENCE THAT THE AIRCRAFT HAD TURNED ONTO FINAL APPROACH, WHEN IT CONTACTED THE GROUND ABOUT 1/4 MILE FROM THE APPROACH END OF RUNWAY 28. DURING IMPACT, THE LEFT WING STRUCK TERRAIN THAT SLOPED FROM LEFT TO RIGHT & WAS ABOUT 25' HIGHER THAN THE AIRPORT ELEVATION. TOXICOLOGY TESTS OF THE PILOT'S BLOOD (TAKEN OVER 2 HOURS AFTER THE ACCIDENT) HAD AN ALCOHOL LEVEL OF 70.0 MG/DL (0.070%). TESTS OF THE PASSENGER'S BLOOD SHOWED AN ALCOHOL LEVEL OF 53.6 MG/DL (0.0536%).
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S IMPAIRMENT OF JUDGMENT AND PERFORMANCE DUE TO ALCOHOL, WHICH LED TO HIS MISJUDGMENT OF ALTITUDE AND DISTANCE TO THE RUNWAY AND COLLISION WITH TERRAIN, WHILE ON FINAL APPROACH TO LAND. A FACTOR RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WAS: DARKNESS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC94LA156
- Event ID
- 20001206X02128
- Case number
- NYC94LA156
- 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: 3b4f7f374d519a9037b7a48430d79d615c5d9c4ba37af4ec6abb0e756d61472e; retrieved 2026-09-21T13:42:35.578Z.