NYC98LA046 · Piper PA-28-161
Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: undershoot on approach
From Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC98LA046
- 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-28-161
- 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
- N2932X
- Operator
- Rao Chundu
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE)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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Undershoot
- 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 › Distance/altitude, misjudged
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Philadelphia, PA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was reportedly practicing short field night landings at PNE to runway 24, a 7,000 foot long, 150 foot wide, asphalt runway. During the 12th landing, the airplane collided with a fence approximately 950 feet from the approach end of runway 24, and the airplane came to rest along the right side of the runway. Examination of the wreckage by a Federal Aviation Administration Inspector did not disclose any evidence of mechanical malfunctions, nor did the pilot report any. The winds at the airport were reported from 230 degrees at 8 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain proper distance and altitude during approach which resulted in an undershoot and collision with a fence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC98LA046
- Event ID
- 20001208X09366
- Case number
- NYC98LA046
- 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 1997-12-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 3855edf5dbe1988c517eecff5dbbb13a1dfd1245099d5ba8dc6ca3f95ab23d17; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:08:51.491Z.