NYC98FA127 · Piper 601P
Piper 601P · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Altoona Blair County Airport (AOO) to Syracuse Hancock International Airport (SYR)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC98FA127
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper 601P
- Aircraft type
- Piper 601
- 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
- N60721
- Operator
- Daniel A. Burwell · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Altoona Blair County Airport (AOO), PATo Syracuse Hancock International Airport (SYR), Syracuse, 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
- 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
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after the airplane took off, a witness about 1 mile from the airport observed the airplane about 150 feet above the ground in a left turn, before it disappeared into the clouds. A witness across from where the airplane crashed stated he was in his shed when he heard the sound of an airplane overhead. When the sound faded and returned, like the airplane had circled above the shed, he stepped outside and looked for the airplane. He saw the airplane exit the clouds in a near vertical position and impact the ground. He described the engine noise as loud and smooth. The airplane impacted in a field about 3/4 miles from the departure airport and was consumed by a post crash fire. Streaks of oil were observed on the leading edge of the right horizontal stabilizer extending to its upper and lower surfaces. Disassembly of both engines did not reveal any pre-impact mechanical malfunctions. A weather observation taken after the accident reported included a visibility of 2 miles with light drizzle and mist, and the ceiling was 400 foot overcast. Witnesses described the weather at the accident site as '...pretty foggy,' and worse than the conditions reported at the airport.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed due to spatial disorientation, which resulted in an inadvertent stall and subsequent collision with terrain. A factor in the accident was the low ceiling.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC98FA127
- Event ID
- 20001211X10395
- Case number
- NYC98FA127
- 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: 6de3e56b4f6de01b0d3f8088a00cff984b7d81855bda587c96631f18d57217d7; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:32:57.557Z.