NYC97LA164 · Piper PA-38-112
Piper PA-38-112 · Accident: on ground/water collision with object while taxiing
From HEF to Leesburg Executive Airport (JYO)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's injuries. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC97LA164
- 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-38-112
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-38
- 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
- N23831
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From HEFTo Leesburg Executive Airport (JYO), Leesburg, VA
- 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
- Taxi · to runway
- 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
- On ground/water collision with object
- 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, misjudged
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Manassas, VA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
While taxiing, the pilot misjudged the clearance of her right wing to a parked fuel truck that was ahead and to the right of her. The right wing tip struck the fuel truck, and the airplane pivoted into the fuel truck. The pilot was not injured, but a person refueling an airplane on the other side of the fuel truck received minor injuries while trying to escape from the scene. The right wing was bent rearward during the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's misjudgment of clearance between the aircraft and fuel truck, which resulted in a collision.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC97LA164
- Event ID
- 20001208X08727
- Case number
- NYC97LA164
- 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: 6cc2fecfee94f22b70004557fa00a4d294688dee74002e4ec030ded6c86b88f1; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:17:24.249Z.