CHI97FA116 · Piper PA-22-150
Piper PA-22-150 · Accident: abrupt maneuver on approach
From West Michigan Regional Airport (BIV) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97FA116
- 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-22-150
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-22
- 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
- N3126Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From West Michigan Regional Airport (BIV), MITo 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- Abrupt maneuver
- 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/mush; 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Maneuver to avoid obstructions, abrupt
- Pilot in command › Stall/mush, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to one of the passengers, during the flare/touchdown as the airplane got down near the runway, there was considerable turbulence, the airplane traveled down the runway without landing for a considerable distance, when the [pilot] decided to go around.' He said that as they passed the end of the runway, he felt the tail of the airplane was low and, '...they seemed to be floating just over the tops of the trees with wiggling type motion by the plane.' He said that the pilot said that, '... the airplane won't climb,' and they were barely clearing the trees. The left wing went down, the airplane hit the trees and impacted into a garage roof. Prior to the flight the pilot had told one passenger that he had never flown the airplane with a passenger in the rear seat which was the case on this flight. A post accident examination of the airplane and engine revealed no pre-existing anomalies.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed which resulted in a stall/mush and subsequent impact with trees and then a residence. A related factor was turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97FA116
- Event ID
- 20001208X07672
- Case number
- CHI97FA116
- 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: 344a7e9543bb2b36c954e42530ae75965c73ba27c5c7f76d0a37faf78f34d516; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:59:10.740Z.