NYC91LA116 · Piper 180
Piper 180 · Accident: hard landing
From Danbury Municipal Airport (DXR) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC91LA116
- 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 180
- Aircraft type
- Piper 180
- 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
- N9006J
- Operator
- DR. Anthony Coscia
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Danbury Municipal Airport (DXR), Danbury, CTTo 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
- 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 › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Flight controls, improper use of
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE AIRPLANE WAS LANDING AT A PRIVATE AIRPORT, WHEN JUST BEFORE TOUCHDOWN, THE PILOT ENCOUNTERED AN UPDRAFT. THE PILOT INITIATED A GO AROUND AND RAISED THE FLAPS TO 25 DEGREES. THE PILOT SAID, 'FULL POWER WAS NOT SUFFICIENT TO INITIATE A GO AROUND...THE PLANE MOVED OUT OF THE SHELTER OF TREES...EXPOSING THE AIRCRAFT TO A CROSSWIND. I DECIDED AT THAT POINT THAT I HAD LITTLE CHANCE OF CLIMBING OUT. I DROPPED A NOTCH OF FLAPS AND THE PLANE SET DOWN ON THE STRIP, BUT IN A LEFTWARD DRIFT, WHERE IT CLIPPED A SMALL TREE ALONG THE LEFT SIDE OF THE RUNWAY, SPUN AROUND AND CAME TO A HALT AFTER A 180 DEGREE SPIN.'
Probable cause
THE FAILURE OF THE PILOT TO MAINTAIN DIRECTIONAL CONTROL DURING A LANDING WITH UNFAVORABLE WINDS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC91LA116
- Event ID
- 20001212X16871
- Case number
- NYC91LA116
- 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: 9f20ab32717a93d110f0cb0faa63a01f1f30e4d14fed402a614e5a8c475ba4e0; retrieved 2026-09-23T04:26:17.008Z.