FTW96LA358 · Piper PA-28-235
Piper PA-28-235 · Accident: overrun during landing
From Kirk Field (PGR) to Harvey Young Airport (1H6)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96LA358
- 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-28-235
- 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
- N8565W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kirk Field (PGR), Paragould, ARTo Harvey Young Airport (1H6)
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Overrun
- 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
- Fluid, hydraulic › Low level
- Landing gear, normal brake system › Inoperative
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inspection, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he executed a normal approach with two notches of flaps. He added that as 'he pulled the brake handle after touching down, the handle came all the way back and [he] realized the brakes had failed.' The pilot added that he pumped the brake handle a few more times in an attempt to stop, but without success. The pilot further stated that he elected not to abort the landing, because he was too far down the runway and too close to the 25 foot trees, obstructing the departure end of the runway. The airplane subsequently overran the 300 foot grass overrun area and impacted a tree stump and bushes. No tire skid marks were found on the freshly sealed 2,580 foot asphalt runway. Postaccident examination of the airplane confirmed that the brake fluid reservoir was empty. A review of the aircraft maintenance records revealed that maintenance was performed on the brake system during the last annual inspection, which was completed 12 flight hours prior to the accident. The runway sloped downhill in the direction of landing.
Probable cause
low fluid level in the hydraulic reservoir, due to inadequate maintenance/inspection, which resulted in an inoperative brake system. Factors relating to the accident were: the down sloping runway, and trees at the departure end of the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96LA358
- Event ID
- 20001208X06510
- Case number
- FTW96LA358
- 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: 85399bf2ed22382a98b17fb7af58d5a43bdd31a35f5ef6bb2d41b8e0acc0c962; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:31:17.258Z.