CHI97LA144 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: in flight collision with object during initial climb
From Rolla Downtown Airport (RLA) to Rolla Downtown Airport (RLA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97LA144
- 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-28-140
- 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
- N5892W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rolla Downtown Airport (RLA)To Rolla Downtown Airport (RLA)
- 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
- 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 › Planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot made a downwind takeoff from a sod runway that was 2,500 feet long. The sod runway was not lighted, nor were there any reflective devices marking the threshold or runway edges. According to the pilot, the airplane became airborne about midfield and did not gain altitude or airspeed as fast as he thought it should. Subsequently, the airplane collided with trees and terrain about 1/2-mile from the departure end of the runway. The airplane was destroyed by the collision and a post-collision fire. The pilot said he took off downwind because he did not believe a 7 knot quartering tailwind would be a factor since it was 'slight.' An on-scene investigation revealed no mechanical anomalies with the engine or airframe that would prevent normal operations. A drug screen performed by the hospital on a sample of the pilot's urine, obtained 10 days after the accident, indicated 'THC presumptive' and did not distinguish between tetrahydrocannabinol (the active component of marijuana) and tetrahydrocannabinol carboxylic acid (an inactive metabolite of marijuana). Marijuana was found in a coat that was in the airplane. The pilot said the coat belonged to the former owner.
Probable cause
improper planning/decision by the pilot. Factors related to the accident were: the pilot's selection of the wrong runway for takeoff, and the resultant tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97LA144
- Event ID
- 20001208X07883
- Case number
- CHI97LA144
- 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 1997-05-24.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f6d8c71b961c0a1ef5059646a7d0851b4e2cb2ec7fe4a383498f1740b121bfe0; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:05:02.122Z.