NYC98LA102 · Piper PA-32-300
Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From New Bedford Regional Airport (EWB) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC98LA102
- 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
- 1 · 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
- N15326
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From New Bedford Regional Airport (EWB)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
- 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
- Flt control syst, yoke/control stick › Locked
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Impairment(alcohol)
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of New Bedford, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
A witness observed the airplane depart Runway 5 and climb at a steep angle. The aircraft then turned to the northwest, then to the northeast, and descended steeply to the ground. Examination of the wreckage by a Federal Aviation Administration Inspector revealed a control lock device, with a locked pad lock, installed on the right hand flight control column. Toxicological testing revealed 155 mg/dL (0.155%) ethanol detected in the pilot's blood, 187 mg/dL ethanol detected in the vitreous, and 205 mg/dL ethanol detected in the urine. A review of 14 CFR Part 91.17, stated, '(a) No Person may act or attempt to act as a crewmember of a civil aircraft...(4) While having a .04 percent by weight or more alcohol in the blood.'
Probable cause
The pilot's impairment due to alcohol, which resulted in an inadequate preflight examination and subsequent takeoff with a control lock installed.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC98LA102
- Event ID
- 20001211X09945
- Case number
- NYC98LA102
- 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 1998-04-26.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c68ab975eef41f05103b5ad6fa510e8f82558a92b194d35c6b77d7c6d8309580; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:36:50.372Z.