NYC97LA180 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From 7G2 · Ashtabula, OH to Pheasant Run Airport (OI31)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC97LA180
- 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-28-180
- 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
- N2480R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 7G2 · Ashtabula, OHTo Pheasant Run Airport (OI31)
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Fluid, hydraulic › Low level
- Landing gear, normal brake system › Failure
- Pilot in command › Operation with known deficiencies in equipment, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot landed a Piper PA-28-180 on a 1,900 foot long turf runway. A witness reported that the airplane touched down about 300 feet past the approach end of the runway. Before stopping, the airplane ran off the departure end of the runway into trees and was substantially damaged. An FAA inspector reported that an examination of the airplane revealed the brake reservoir was empty. The airplane had received an annual inspection on 7/2/97. The pilot reported that during previous operations, the brakes were spongy, but that he could remedy the problem by pumping the brakes several times. Interviews disclosed the pilot had not reported the spongy brake problem to the mechanic, and he continued to fly the airplane with defective brakes.
Probable cause
a lack of fluid in the brake reservoir, and the pilot's decision to operate the airplane with defective brakes, which led to an overrun during landing and a collision with trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC97LA180
- Event ID
- 20001208X08911
- Case number
- NYC97LA180
- 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: 1a48cd3fc2756aafec4351edcdd2b738cf8a352347552ed1afc42cff2242b22d; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:40:00.325Z.