CHI93LA088 · Piper PA-28-235
Piper PA-28-235 · Accident: hard landing
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI93LA088
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-28-235
- 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
- N8784W
- Operator
- Brown, Carol · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Flight into known adverse weather, initiated
- Wing › Ice
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE INSTRUMENT FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR OBTAINED A PREFLIGHT WEATHER BRIEFING DURING WHICH HE WAS ADVISED THERE WERE REPORTS OF LIGHT RIME ICE. THE PILOTS TOOK OFF FOR A LOCAL FLIGHT TO PRACTICE APPROACHES. BOTH PILOTS REPORTED THEIR APPROACH BACK TO THE AIRPORT APPEARED NORMAL UNTIL THE STUDENT BEGAN TO FLARE. THE AIRPLANE '...JUST SEEMED TO QUIT FLYING AND SANK RAPIDLY TO THE RUNWAY.' THE RIGHT MAIN LANDING GEAR SEPARATED FROM THE AIRPLANE AT GROUND IMPACT. THE AIRPLANE SKIDDED TO A STOP ON THE RUNWAY. POST-ACCIDENT EXAMINATION REVEALED ACCUMULATIONS OF ROUGH RIME ICE BETWEEN 1/2 AND ONE INCH THICK ON LEADING EDGES, ETC. THE INSTRUCTOR REPORTED HE NOTED ICE ACCUMULATING ON THE WINDSHIELD, BUT ADDED HE WAS NOT CONCERNED BECAUSE THE AIRPLANE 'COULD HANDLE LIGHT ICE VERY WELL.' THE INSTRUCTOR STATED THE AIRPLANE STALLED ABOUT 16 MPH FASTER THAN PUBLISHED STALL AIRSPEED.
Probable cause
THE PILOT-IN-COMMAND'S DECISION TO INITIATE FLIGHT INTO KNOWN ICING CONDITIONS WHICH RESULTED IN AN ACCUMMULATION OF AIRFRAME ICE. THE ICING CONDITIONS AND THE PILOT'S DISREGARD OF THE WEATHER ADVISORY WERE FACTORS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI93LA088
- Event ID
- 20001211X11801
- Case number
- CHI93LA088
- 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: 89eb54b0d88ae22330c66775ca63aac96f4ffc4fe5b66bdc6290a379e48b610a; retrieved 2026-09-23T02:20:27.118Z.