NYC98LA033 · Piper PA-32-300
Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during takeoff
From John Murtha Johnstown Cambria County Airport (JST) to Philadelphia International Airport (PHL)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC98LA033
- 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-32-300
- 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
- N2202U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From John Murtha Johnstown Cambria County Airport (JST)To Philadelphia International Airport (PHL), Philadelphia, PA
- 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that during the takeoff roll on runway 23, he felt what seemed like 'a hand shove the plane left.' The airplane departed the left side of the runway onto an intersecting taxiway. The airplane was returning to the runway when it impacted a snowbank which was located on the intersecting taxiway and extended 2 feet onto runway 23. The Airport Daily Inspection Report, listed the condition of the airport surface areas, and snowbanks as 'O.K.' A weather observation taken after the accident reported the wind from 260 degrees at 17 knots, gusting to 24 knots.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain direction control of the airplane during the takeoff roll. Factors relating to this accident were: the crosswind condition, and snowbank.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC98LA033
- Event ID
- 20001208X09240
- Case number
- NYC98LA033
- 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 1997-11-26.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c1e1118a599e561285c9d4f675a509552d53ce73071dfc10e6043d4c55c469cf; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:10:22.129Z.