FTW96FA088 · Piper PA-34-200T
Piper PA-34-200T · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Wichita Falls Municipal Airport / Sheppard Air Force Base (SPS) to Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport (LBB)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96FA088
- 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
- 2 · 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-34-200T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-34
- 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
- N8894E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wichita Falls Municipal Airport / Sheppard Air Force Base (SPS)To Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport (LBB), Lubbock, TX
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- 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 › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Wichita Falls, TX, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
Following takeoff, the pilot reported to the tower that he needed to return to land due to the loss of power to the right engine. The airplane was observed by witnesses to be in a pronounced right yaw/out of trim attitude as soon as the airplane became airborne. Examination of the wreckage revealed that the rudder trim was in the 50% nose right position. The pilot had made a precautionary landing at that airport the night before due to a reported partial loss of power on the left engine. Maintenance personnel found and repaired the source of the power loss. The pilot told the mechanics that both engines were beyond TBO and he was concerned about the reliability of the engines. Teardown and examination of both engines and turbochargers did not reveal any anomalies that would have prevented normal engine operation.
Probable cause
The inadvertent stall by the pilot in command. Factors were the impeded airplane takeoff performance, the rudder trim not corrected by the pilot, and the pilot's failure to comply with the checklist.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96FA088
- Event ID
- 20001208X05123
- Case number
- FTW96FA088
- 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: 6af8e1be80df71aa6feddfd323c8766d100b1e3fb1288eb03688a87926694d23; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:27:36.293Z.