FTW97FA103 · Piper PA-24-250
Piper PA-24-250 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Four Corners Regional Airport (FMN) to E80 · Belen, NM
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97FA103
- 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
- 5 · 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-24-250
- 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
- N6433P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Four Corners Regional Airport (FMN)To E80 · Belen, NM
- 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
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the initial climb after a night takeoff, the airplane was observed to stall, enter a spin, and impact the ground in a nose down attitude. Examination of the airplane and engine revealed no preimpact mechanical discrepancies. Although five persons were aboard the 4-seat airplane, an estimate of the airplane's weight and balance at the time of the accident placed it within allowable limits. The commercial/instrument rated pilot had accumulated 201 hours in this make and model airplane. Bright night visual meteorological conditions prevailed with clear skies, visibility 15 miles, and the moon 29 degrees above the horizon and 59% illuminated. An autopsy of the 22 year old pilot was performed, and microscopy of the heart revealed 70% narrowing of the atrioventricular (AV) nodal artery. FAIP pathologists noted that 'A single focus of inflammation with myocyte necrosis does not, in our opinion, warrant a diagnosis of myocarditis as a cause of sudden death, as this finding may also be seen in non-cardiac deaths. We were unable to appreciate ischemic changes in the myocardium.
Probable cause
loss of aircraft control for undetermined reason(s).
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97FA103
- Event ID
- 20001208X07398
- Case number
- FTW97FA103
- 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 1997-02-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a6c8f765c1c00aa000b8d276cd2bb8a81ce4b70d1507baa3b005ca8ece7de5b0; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:02:25.921Z.