BFO93FA050 · Piper PA-32-300
Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Roadcap Airport (37PA) to Arnold Palmer Regional Airport (LBE)
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO93FA050
- 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
- 2 · 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 PA-32-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N28196
- Operator
- Martin Maerz
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Roadcap Airport (37PA), SMOKETOWN, PATo Arnold Palmer Regional Airport (LBE), Latrobe, PA
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC); Tree(s)
- 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 › Altitude, not maintained
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
ON JANUARY 15, 1993, THE PILOT REQUESTED AND RECEIVED A WEATHER BRIEFING FROM FSS PERSONNEL FOR A FLIGHT FROM SMOKETOWN, PA, TO LATROBE, PA. THE PILOT WAS ISSUED FLIGHT PRECAUTIONS AND FORECASTS FOR IFR CONDITIONS. VFR FLIGHT WAS NOT RECOMMENDED. A RADAR TARGET WAS OBSERVED DEPARTING SMOKETOWN AT 0727 EST AND WAS TRACKED TOWARDS LATROBE. THE AIRPLANE WAS REPORTED MISSING LATER THE SAME MORNING AND A SEARCH WAS INITIATED. THE AIRPLANE WRECKAGE AND OCCUPANTS WERE LOCATED ON MARCH 18, 1993. AN EXAMINATION OF THE ACCIDENT SITE AND AIRPLANE REVEALED THAT THE AIRPLANE CONTACTED TREES AT THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN AND THEN IMPACTED THE TERRAIN AT ABOUT AN ALTITUDE OF 2,800 FEET MSL. NO AIRFRAME OR ENGINE ANOMALIES WERE NOTED. THE PRIVATE PILOT WAS NON INSTRUMENT RATED AND NO FLIGHT PLAN HAD BEEN FILED FOR THE FLIGHT. INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS PREVAILED AT THE TIME OF THE ACCIDENT.
Probable cause
VISUAL FLIGHT RULES (VFR) FLIGHT BY THE PILOT INTO INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS (IMC), AND THE PILOT'S FAILURE TO MAINTAIN SUFFICIENT ALTITUDE FROM THE WOODED TERRAIN. THE TERRAIN AND ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS WERE RELATED FACTORS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO93FA050
- Event ID
- 20001211X11655
- Case number
- BFO93FA050
- 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: df774d187996faa82a534415f103153be537e80f120b83cbbca3c8a5c5e7b8b9; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:43:53.433Z.