FTW99IA024 · Piper PA-23-235
Piper PA-23-235 · Incident on approach
From Mineral Wells Regional Airport (MWL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW99IA024
- 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
- Incident
- 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
- 1 · 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-23-235
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-23
- 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
- N4927P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mineral Wells Regional Airport (MWL)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
- Approach
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Incapacitation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot rated passenger stated that, the multi-engine airplane was within 5 nautical miles of the airport and the pilot-in-command (PIC) was maneuvering the airplane on a VOR approach (practice instrument approach). The PIC maneuvered the airplane into a descending left turn to remain on course. 'Within two to three seconds,' the airplane entered a 'steep descent.' The PIC entered a state of unconsciousness and, subsequently, died. The 600 hour pilot rated passenger, who was rated to fly single engine aircraft, took control of the airplane. The passenger who was seated in the rear of the airplane contacted personnel at the airport over the Unicom frequency. He requested that emergency personnel be contacted and requested that a multi-engine rated pilot assist the pilot with landing procedures. The pilot rated passenger, assisted by an airline pilot via radio, landed the airplane without incident and emergency medical personnel met the airplane. Autopsy findings showed that the PIC (who held a valid third class medical certificate) died of a heart attack.
Probable cause
The pilot-in-command's incapacitation due to cardiovascular disease.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW99IA024
- Event ID
- 20001211X11420
- Case number
- FTW99IA024
- 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, damage. 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: 032d75793e62efcc44621eeae44dd9a98be4a4113e05febdbda8c65d281ad40b; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:19:39.719Z.