CHI97LA253 · Piper PA-28-121
Piper PA-28-121 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Redwood Falls Municipal Airport (RWF) to Y29
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97LA253
- 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-28-121
- 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
- N2228Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Redwood Falls Municipal Airport (RWF), Redwood Falls, MNTo Y29
- 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
- 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 on ground/water
- 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 › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Ground loop/swerve, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot overflew Glencoe Airport to obtain wind direction, while monitoring the Litchfield and Hutchison, Minnesota, Aviation Weather Observation Stations for wind information. He entered right traffic for runway 13. He said that on his first attempt to land, he could not keep the airplane aligned on the runway, so he performed a go-around and climbed back to traffic pattern altitude. He said, 'I did an extended downwind to give me more time to align with the runway on final. I touched down slightly past the runway number markings. I then became airborne again and did not have enough wind correction. A heavy crosswind pushed me off the left side of the runway which was a grassy area with standing water.' As the pilot was trying to stop the airplane, the airplane's left wing struck a pine tree, turning the airplane 90-degrees from its heading. It then went into a small grove of pine trees and came to a stop. Examination of the airplane revealed no anomalies. About 15 miles west-northwest at Hutchison, the 1135 cdt wind was reported to be from 170 degrees at 10 knots. About 30 miles northwest at Litchfield, the 1135 cdt wind was reported to be from 170 degrees at 6 gusting 14 knots.
Probable cause
failure of the pilot to maintain directional control of the airplane during the landing, which resulted in an inadvertent ground swerve and subsequent collision with trees. Factors associated with the accident were: the crosswind, and proximity of trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97LA253
- Event ID
- 20001208X08581
- Case number
- CHI97LA253
- 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: 1390715b66c13dfb789aff1c70476a9b6122d333b64a4c2d7a85d13cf3ab66bd; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:52:38.807Z.