NYC96FA023 · Piper PA-24-180
Piper PA-24-180 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Lebanon Municipal Airport (LEB) to Allegheny County Airport (AGC)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC96FA023
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-24-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N7734P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lebanon Municipal Airport (LEB), Lebanon, NHTo Allegheny County Airport (AGC), Pittsburgh, PA
- 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 · climb to 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Stall/spin
- 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 › Airspeed, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Stall/spin, inadvertent
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Hartford, VT, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
A witness observed the airplane during its initial climb after takeoff, in a slow rate of climb, with the landing gear extended. A flight instructor, flying above and behind, observed the airplane pitch up and enter a two turn left spin. He observed the airplane crash in a steep descent, with the landing gear extended, about 3 miles from the airport. Examination of the wreckage revealed no preimpact failure of the airframe or engine. The airplane had departed with full fuel, three occupants, and 159 pounds of baggage. The airplane was about 124 pounds over its maximum gross weight. Before the flight, the pilot requested that a lineman brush snow off of the airplane, and after the snow was removed, light icing remained on the inboard wing and left inboard horizontal stabilizer.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate preflight planning/preparation, his inadequate removal of airframe ice, and his failure to maintain adequate airspeed, which resulted in a stall/spin and an inflight collision with terrain. Factors relating to the accident were: the pilot allowed the airplane's gross weight to be exceeded, and he failed to raise the landing gear during the climb after takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC96FA023
- Event ID
- 20001207X04908
- Case number
- NYC96FA023
- 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: a1259872920c9163069dc61c3ede7d35ea192e7f8e3db89f31d9b7dd67e0d8a4; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:32:14.273Z.