NYC97LA107 · Piper PA-28-181
Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Essex County Airport (CDW) to Walton Airport (2NK7)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC97LA107
- 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-28-181
- 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
- N38758
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Essex County Airport (CDW), Caldwell, NJTo Walton Airport (2NK7)
- 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
- 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 › Go-around, delayed
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and two passengers arrived at their destination airport after a 1 hour flight. The pilot established a final approach to the runway 26, decided that he was too high to land, and performed a go-around. The runway length was 2300 feet. He established a right turn to depart the area, and then 'thought' he saw the airport. He established a second approach and realized that it was not the airport. The pilot initiated a climb out straight ahead, and decided that he did not have enough turning room left or right, and the rising terrain was beyond the climb capability of airplane. The pilot retracted the flaps gradually during climb and the airplane began to sink. With the stall warning on, the pilot selected and flew the airplane into a tall pine tree. The airplane then descended through trees and came to a stop on the ground. The pilot did not report any mechanical problems with the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper inflight decision to establish an approach without confirming the landing area, and his delayed go-around, which resulted in the inflight collision with trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC97LA107
- Event ID
- 20001208X08214
- Case number
- NYC97LA107
- 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: 2990ebe38a7120ffe14a1bbc9bce6c7037a02bdf50feb1b417a70ab13d64cfd8; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:03:43.660Z.