IAD97FA079 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Igor I Sikorsky Memorial Airport (BDR) to Republic Airport (FRG)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD97FA079
- 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
- 4 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-28-180
- 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
- N6337J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Igor I Sikorsky Memorial Airport (BDR), Bridgeport, CTTo Republic Airport (FRG), Farmingdale, NY
- 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 · IFR missed approach
- 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
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot took off at night without obtaining a weather brief or filing a flight plan. The weather at his destination, approximately 30 miles away, included low ceilings and fog. Once airborne, the pilot immediately requested an instrument flight rules clearance to his destination and was vectored for the ILS approach. En-route, the controller questioned the pilot concerning his altitude, and before turning on final course, the pilot requested the ILS frequency for his destination. Once on the tower frequency, the controller told the pilot that the airplane was east of the final course and the pilot concurred. Nothing was heard from the pilot until he announced that he was executing a missed approach procedure. The radar track of the airplane indicated that the airplane turned to the east and was last recorded on a northeast heading at 600 feet MSL. The airplane impacted the ground on a westerly heading. The airplane's maintenance logbooks indicated the pitot static system was not tested in the previous 24 months. Examination of the wreckage did not reveal any mechanical problems with the airframe and engine.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane. Factors to this accident were night instrument meteorological conditions with low ceiling and fog.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD97FA079
- Event ID
- 20001208X07933
- Case number
- IAD97FA079
- 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 1997-06-01.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2a508cab0c21c0bfd2dd8d5cfbe79f0d734bf1a6b62d3af4cd031500ae1f2adb; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:56:54.961Z.