NYC98LA146 · Piper PA28-140
Piper PA28-140 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Knox County Regional Airport (RKD) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC98LA146
- 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 PA28-140
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N5755F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Knox County Regional Airport (RKD)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 attained
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Rockland, ME, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot (SP) was performing a soft field takeoff. He stated, 'I pulled yoke full aft, power full, [and] rolled down the runway. Plane wallowed into air at approximately 60 MPH. I pushed nose forward, left wing dropped. Plane wandered to side of runway. I lost ground effect. Left wing dropped. Plane looped to left. I tried to correct. Apparently pulled nose up too much [and] stalled....' The airplane's left wing tip and propeller struck the ground. The airplane cartwheeled, and came to rest in a swampy area on the left side of the runway, where a post crash fire ensued. Examination of wreckage did not reveal any evidence a mechanical malfunction of the airframe or engine. The SP reported 43 hours of total flight experience, all in make and model.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to attain adequate airspeed during the takeoff, which resulted in a stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC98LA146
- Event ID
- 20001211X10680
- Case number
- NYC98LA146
- 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: 4dbf03dd906dae5848e9b9f6feeb3120c3f6f553a639b92f25f3ed4f352bad8f; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:45:46.680Z.