NYC95FA127 · Piper PA-28-181
Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport (MGY) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC95FA127
- 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
- 1 · 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-28-181
- 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
- N8261L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport (MGY), Dayton, OHTo 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
- En route · descent
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT DEPARTED ON AN INSTRUMENT PROFICIENCY FLIGHT IN VISUAL METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS. THE FIRST 30 MINUTES OF THE FLIGHT, WHICH INCLUDED A PRACTICE APPROACH, MISSED APPROACH, AND RADIO COMMUNICATIONS, WERE NORMAL. DURING THE RETURN FLIGHT TO THE DEPARTURE AIRPORT, THE PILOT WAS ISSUED A DESCENT FROM 4,000 TO 3,000 FEET. THE PILOT'S ACKNOWLEDGEMENT WAS SLOW AND HESITANT. WITNESSES OBSERVED THE AIRPLANE IMPACT THE GROUND IN A DESCENDING LEFT BANK, AT A HIGH RATE OF AIRSPEED, WITH HIGH PITCHED ENGINE SOUNDS. EXAMINATION OF THE WRECKAGE REVEALED NO PRE-IMPACT FAILURES OF THE ENGINE OR AIRFRAME. THE CLOUD LAYER IN THE AREA WAS ABOVE 3,000 FEET, AND THE VISIBILITY WAS 10 MILES. FAMILY MEMBERS AND CO-WORKERS REVEALED THAT THE PILOT WAS EMPLOYED AS A CONSTRUCTION SUPERVISOR, AND WAS ON ASSIGNMENT OUT OF STATE. THE PILOT WORKED 12 TO 14-HOUR DAYS, AND HAD BEEN COMMUTING HOME ON WEEKENDS. A C0-WORKER STATED THE PILOT REPORTED THAT HE HAD FALLEN ASLEEP IN TRAFFIC DURING THE DRIVE INTO WORK. THE PILOT'S DAUGHTER REPORTED THAT HER FATHER LOOKED TIRED 2 DAYS PRIOR TO THE ACCIDENT.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane which resulted in a collision with terrain during a descent.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC95FA127
- Event ID
- 20001207X03523
- Case number
- NYC95FA127
- 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: 210edb1ddfabcfd5fc18bc0f733957176bf52e5e30b2c665e403337424dbb2b2; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:45:41.631Z.