FTW96LA401 · Piper PA28-151
Piper PA28-151 · Accident: on ground/water collision with object during landing
From 00V to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96LA401
- 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 PA28-151
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N41369
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 00VTo 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
- 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
- On ground/water collision with object
- 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
- Pilot in command › Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area, selected
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Falcon, CO, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
After a night local area personal flight, the pilot was attempting to land at the airport of departure and could not turn on the runway lights by use of the UNICOM. He attempted to land without this aid and the landing was made in a ditch between the runway and taxiway. During landing roll the aircraft struck a culvert. The frequency for the UNICOM had been changed several weeks earlier and this change had been published in NOTAMS, and local air traffic control and flight service had the change published in controller instructions. No evidence was found that the pilot attempted to contact these facilities. Lighting and weather at the time was clear skies and dark night lighting.
Probable cause
Failure by the pilot to select suitable terrain for landing. Factors were inadequate preflight planning and preparation for the flight by the pilot by failing to check NOTAMS and failing to use communication aids available to him.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96LA401
- Event ID
- 20001208X06742
- Case number
- FTW96LA401
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1996-09-25.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f171521b504eb0a83efc1e1f2b2f3dd737419dfdc8716ec61a9ed22e64af9200; retrieved 2026-09-22T21:03:27.138Z.