CHI98FA130 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Kalamazoo/Battle Creek International Airport (AZO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98FA130
- 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
- 4 · 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-28-140
- 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
- N1762J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kalamazoo/Battle Creek International Airport (AZO)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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses reported seeing the airplane liftoff runway 5 past the runway 17/35 intersection located approximately 3108 feet from the approach end of runway 5. Runway 5 is 3,999 feet long. Witnesses reported the airplane climbed to 250 to 300 feet when the airplane rolled left and went straight down. The airplane burst into flames and the cockpit and fuselage were consumed by fire. Continuity was established to the flight controls. The propeller exhibited extensive chordwise scratching and gouges to the leading edges of the blades. Both blades exhibited torsional twisting and were bent back. The impact of the propeller on the taxiway left a shallow 'U' shaped impression about 0.5 inch deep in the taxiway asphalt. The pilot and the three adult passengers had a combined weight of about 730 pounds. The airplane was approximately 164 pounds over the maximum gross weight at takeoff. The airplane departed with a 4 knot left quartering tailwind.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate flying airspeed resulting in a stall condition. Contributing factors were the tailwind condition and the pilot's exceeding the gross weight of the airplane on takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98FA130
- Event ID
- 20001211X09808
- Case number
- CHI98FA130
- 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 1998-04-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 95f29d546516e65c6f0f2a2410d8b1bbd2e0003d091099f53a6399b0d8469bdc; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:37:15.617Z.