CHI97LA262 · Piper PA-32R-301
Piper PA-32R-301 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Jefferson City Memorial Airport (JEF) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97LA262
- 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-32R-301
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N8147B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jefferson City Memorial Airport (JEF)To 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- 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
- Stall
- 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 preflight, improper
- Pilot in command › Recovery from bounced landing, not performed
- Pilot in command › Remedial action, not performed
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that they had just taken off and were 'approximately 20 to 25 feet in the air when the engine rpm dropped from 2,700 to 400.' As the airspeed decreased, the airplane began to roll to the left. The pilot said that he kept the nose of the airplane up, and leveled the wings. 'As the airplane began to settle, the rpm zoomed to 700. The airplane touched down and then bounced back into the air.' The airplane was about 20 feet above the ground when the rpm dropped to zero and the left wing dropped again. The pilot again leveled the wings. By this time the airplane was left of the runway. The pilot decided to land in the dirt along-side the runway. 'The airplane touched down hard and then slid for a short distance.' The passenger in the right front seat said that after a short takeoff roll, the airplane got airborne, came down, bounced back in the air, and then came down very fast hitting left wing first. The passenger in the right rear seat said that it was loud when they took off and that the airplane was vibrating and seemed very rough. Examination of the airplane's stabilizer trim showed an almost full nose up trim setting. The rudder trim was set at full nose left. No other anomalies were revealed with the airplane.
Probable cause
the pilot's incomplete preflight of the airplane's stabilizer and rudder trim settings for takeoff, his failure to correct for the high pitch during the initial climb, his failure to recover from the bounced landing, and the inadvertent stall. Factors relating to this accident were the improper stabilizer and rudder trim settings.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97LA262
- Event ID
- 20001208X08589
- Case number
- CHI97LA262
- 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 1997-08-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 169606c1f71aad45665c4d6e5dfe597292ca52bd618ad33a8c36d4755dba36f8; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:13:53.404Z.