NYC98FA124 · Piper PA-28-181
Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Norwood Memorial Airport (OWD) to Niagara Falls International Airport (IAG)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC98FA124
- 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
- 3 · 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-28-181
- 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
- N75137
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Norwood Memorial Airport (OWD), Norwood, MATo Niagara Falls International Airport (IAG), Niagara Falls, NY
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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 › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Dalton, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
Before departure, the non instrument rated, pilot rated passenger received two weather briefings. During the first briefings she was advised that VFR flight was not recommended. The second briefing she did not complete, expressing concern about the weather. She then briefed her father, who was also a non instrument rated pilot about the weather, adding she did not feel comfortable with the conditions. The father then called Bridgeport AFSS, and requested the cloud tops. The airplane departed, and the pilot requested radar traffic advisories from approach control. The last 37 seconds of radar beacon data revealed that the airplane turned left approximately 180 degrees and descended from 6,500 feet msl to 5,600 feet msl. The airplane then entered an uncontrolled descent and the right wing separated. The pilot had a total of 350.0 hours of flight experience, and the pilot rated passenger had a total of 90.2 hours of flight experience. At the time of the accident, another pilot in the area reported IMC conditions from 6,000 feet msl to 8,000 feet msl and moderate turbulence. Examination of the wreckage revealed no structural failures from fatigue.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to continue the flight into instrument meteorological conditions, resulting in a loss of control, and airplane stress limits to be exceeded. Factors in the accident, the pilot's decision to disregard the preflight weather briefing, and his lack of instrument flight certification.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC98FA124
- Event ID
- 20001211X10394
- Case number
- NYC98FA124
- 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: b0d7b74f82dac15530730bfea30a1a5ae4bc57cd81bd0aacc6fe80b7ed4daacd; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:33:47.639Z.