BFO92FA088 · Piper PA-34-200T
Alexandria Aviation Piper PA-34-200T · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Bowling Green Warren County Regional Airport (BWG) to The Eastern Iowa Airport (CID)
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO92FA088
- 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
- 3 · 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-34-200T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-34
- 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
- N188AL
- Operator
- Alexandria Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bowling Green Warren County Regional Airport (BWG)To The Eastern Iowa Airport (CID), Cedar Rapids, IA
- 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 · climb to 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
SHORTLY AFTER TAKEOFF, THE AIRPLANE CRASHED ABOUT .8 MILES EAST FROM THE DEPARTED RUNWAY 21. THE PILOT REPORTED A CLOUD BASE OF 800 FEET AGL TO THE FAA FLIGHT SERVICE STATION 1 MINUTE AFTER TAKEOFF. SHORTLY THEREAFTER, WITNESSES STATED THAT THEY HEARD THE AIRPLANE'S ENGINE 'SCREAMING' AND THE AIRPLANE CAME OUT OF THE CLOUDS TOWARDS THE GROUND. WITNESSES STATED THAT THEY SAW THE NOSE OF THE AIRPLANE RISE JUST PRIOR TO IMPACTING THE TREES. THE ON SCENE INVESTIGATION DID NOT REVEAL ANY AIRPLANE ANOMALIES. AN ENGINE EXAMINATION WAS ACCOMPLISHED AND NO ANOMALIES WERE NOTED. THE INSTRUMENT PANEL AND AUTO PILOT CONTROLS WERE DESTROYED BY IMPACT FORCES. THREE GYROS WERE RECOVERED FROM THE WRECKAGE AND EXAMINED. TWO OF THE THREE GYRO CASINGS EXHIBITED ROTATIONAL SCORING. THE PILOT HAD LOGGED ABOUT 354 HOURS TOTAL FLIGHT TIME. HE EARNED HIS INSTRUMENT RATING ON MAY 31, 1992. INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS PREVAILED AT THE TIME OF THE ACCIDENT.
Probable cause
THE LOSS OF CONTROL IN FLIGHT DUE TO SPATIAL DISORIENTATION/VERTIGO.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO92FA088
- Event ID
- 20001211X15052
- Case number
- BFO92FA088
- 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: d1b12b4ea9464f6369eedba8b1e465ed1f39c22c441aa0d395a78f35c2128602; retrieved 2026-09-21T01:03:17.839Z.