FTW98LA312 · Piper PA-30
Piper PA-30 · Accident: undershoot on approach
From FTG to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA312
- 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-30
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-30
- 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
- N444BP
- Operator
- Arthur E. Dodd · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From FTGTo 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
- Light condition › Dark night
- Pilot in command › Altitude/clearance, misjudged
- Weather condition › Unfavorable wind
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Following takeoff for a local area personal night flight, the pilot noticed lightning to the north of his position so he returned to land. While on a 2 mile final for landing on runway 8, the aircraft settled and struck the ground. The pilot said he thought he encountered a low level wind shear. Weather at the time was scattered clouds with 10 miles visibility and wind from 160 degrees at 18 knots. An airport located approximately 7 miles northwest of the accident site was equipped with low level wind shear alert equipment which was operational. The equipment did not sound an alarm. The pilot said he was flying at 6,000 feet msl and the accident site elevation was 5,689 feet msl.
Probable cause
The pilot misjudged his altitude. Contributing to the accident were unfavorable wind and dark night conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA312
- Event ID
- 20001211X10580
- Case number
- FTW98LA312
- 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 1998-07-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 33d20fc71f3e232122e25a5ddbc7268e07a2f7cf55a84739ce37b4e5ec723efa; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:46:29.222Z.