CHI99LA038 · Piper PA-28R-200
Piper PA-28R-200 · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water while taxiing
From Houghton County Memorial Airport (CMX) to Pellston Regional Airport of Emmet County Airport (PLN)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99LA038
- 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-28R-200
- 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
- N5256T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Houghton County Memorial Airport (CMX)To Pellston Regional Airport of Emmet County Airport (PLN), Pellston, MI
- 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
- Taxi · to runway
- 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
- On ground/water collision with terrain/water
- 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
- Pilot in command › Became lost/disoriented
- Pilot in command › Throttle/power control, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was taxiing to the runway when the airplane traveled off the ramp into an unlit open grass area. The airplane continued through the grass until coming to a stop after traveling into a 10 foot deep ditch. The pilot reported he had never landed at this airport before and that he did not reduce the throttle when the airplane left the paved ramp area. The taxiway lights were lit at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
the pilot became disoriented while taxiing at an unfamiliar airport and his failure to reduce engine power when the airplane departed the paved surface. Factors associated with the accident were the dark night condition, the pilot did not follow the correct taxi route to the runway, and the ditch which the airplane contacted.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99LA038
- Event ID
- 20001211X11393
- Case number
- CHI99LA038
- 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 1998-11-25.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 94ae43fa9251af2ab219a899731b6aaf923b9dc4217663788a9b4a543494a38c; retrieved 2026-09-22T16:17:04.551Z.