CHI97LA259 · Piper PA-25-235
Piper PA-25-235 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Traudt Airport (NE86) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97LA259
- 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-25-235
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-25
- 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
- N8622L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Traudt Airport (NE86), Sutton, NETo 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 terrain/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 › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
In his written statement, the pilot said that while en route to the fields to be sprayed, he was distracted by problems with the on board 'global positioning flagger' equipment. 'I called the base to get assistance on getting the light bar to work. After circling the field several times, I discovered that I had inadvertently turned the light bar off and I switched it back on.' The pilot circled around to re-enter the field on which he made his first aerial application pass. He reported that upon completing his second pass he observed another ag-plane entering the area. The pilot reported that because of the distraction, and the downwind turn, he was '...wide off my mark.' The pilot maneuvered the airplane to line up on the field. 'As I entered the field, I realized that I was having a problem with lift. But before I was able to increase throttle or dump the load, the plane was starting to sink in the corn.' The airplane then impacted into the field and came to a stop. Examination of the airplane revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
the pilot not maintaining clearance from the terrain. Factors contributing to this accident were the pilot's diverted attention due to the problems with his global positioning flagger equipment and the other ag- airplane, and the crop.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97LA259
- Event ID
- 20001208X08586
- Case number
- CHI97LA259
- 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: 1519da4614eaa980e96f1215dc4fbfe9325bda04664805d9bcfbea657808e543; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:49:06.117Z.