FTW97LA214 · Piper PA-34-200T
Piper PA-34-200T · Accident: hard landing
From 5T6 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97LA214
- 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-34-200T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-34
- 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
- N36275
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 5T6To 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Airspeed(vmc), not maintained
- Pilot in command › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses at the airport observed the airplane entering the traffic pattern for touch-and-go landings on runway 28. They reported that the airplane landed hard, porpoised 3 or 4 times, and departed the right side of the runway. According to the pilot-in-command (PIC), the pilot rated passenger in the right seat, who was reported to hold an airline transport rating, applied full power after announcing 'lets go around.' The power in the right engine 'was slow to develope, which instantly skewed the airplane off the runway.' The PIC stated that the airplane was at about 5 feet off the ground as 'he reduced the power to the good engine.' The PIC added that the airspeed was at or near VMC, and 'the airplane started to roll and directional control was not possible.' The PIC reported that he 'pulled both engines back and flared.' In the recommendation block of a Pilot/Operator Report, the PIC recommended 'not attempting [a] full throttle go-around until both engines are confirmed operational, or far above VMC.'
Probable cause
the pilot-in-command's (PIC's) inadequate supervision of the flight by allowing the pilot-rated passenger to attempt a go-around (aborted landing) without maitaining minimum control speed (VMC), which resulted in loss of aircraft control. Factors relating to the accident were: the pilot-rated passenger's improper flare and improper recovery from a bounced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97LA214
- Event ID
- 20001208X07930
- Case number
- FTW97LA214
- 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: a006dde509c7717d0657624917028bfbaefb495dc1188b6d2b050524bd97ecf1; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:32:56.109Z.