IAD96FA050 · Piper PA-23-250
Piper PA-23-250 · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Lonesome Pine Airport (LNP) to Mountain Empire Airport (MKJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD96FA050
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-23-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-23
- 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
- N54839
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lonesome Pine Airport (LNP), Wise, VATo Mountain Empire Airport (MKJ), 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
- Approach · IFR final approach
- 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 collision with object
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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 › IFR procedure, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot told ATC that he saw the runway (runway 26) during the first localizer approach, but the airplane was too fast to make the landing, so he missed the approach. The pilot was cleared for the second localizer approach to the destination airport at 0048. At approximately 0100, the airplane struck a 100-foot tall tree, and collided with terrain about 1 mile east of the airport. The airport elevation is 2559 feet, and the published minimum descent altitude for the airport was 3020 feet msl, with 1 mile visibility. The reported visibility at the destination airport was 1/4 mile in fog. The localizer approach was test flown by the FAA the day after the accident and it operated satisfactory.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain adequate altitude/clearance during the instrument approach (FAF/Outer Marker to Threshold IFR), which resulted in the in-flight collision with trees. A related factor was the foggy weather conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD96FA050
- Event ID
- 20001208X05410
- Case number
- IAD96FA050
- 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: 6590aa2cab67c76ae911c8cd9bbbd7cf7169618c132b1f81efe38689de34af15; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:24:25.273Z.