ATL91LA135 · Piper PA-24-260
Logan Lesh Communications Piper PA-24-260 · Accident: near collision between aircraft during landing
From Humboldt Municipal Airport (M53) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL91LA135
- 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 PA-24-260
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N8739P
- Operator
- Logan Lesh Communications
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Humboldt Municipal Airport (M53), Humboldt, TNTo 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
- Near collision between aircraft
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT OF THE PA-24 REPORTED THAT HE ENTERED THE TRAFFIC PATTERN AND SET UP FOR LANDING TO RUNWAY 3. HE DID NOT SEE OR HEAR ANY OTHER TRAFFIC IN THE PATTERN. JUST PRIOR TO TOUCHDOWN, HE SAW A PIPER J-3 ON THE RUNWAY, OPPOSITE DIRECTION. HE EXECUTED A RIGHT, CLIMBING GO-AROUND. HE THEN OBSERVED A TOWER IN HIS FLIGHT PATH AND MADE AN IMMEDIATE TURN TO THE LEFT. THE AIRPLANE STALLED AND IMPACTED THE GROUND NEAR MID FIELD. ALTHOUGH THE PILOT OF THE PA-24 CLAIMED THAT THE J-3 WAS BACK-TAXIING FOR TAKEOFF, THE INVESTIGATION REVEALED THAT THE J-3 WAS ACTUALLY ON LANDING ROLLOUT (RWY 22) WHEN FIRST OBSERVED BY THE PA-24 PILOT. THE J-3 PILOT DID NOT SEE THE PA-24 UNTIL AFTER THE GO-AROUND WAS PERFORMED. THE J-3, A HIGH-WING AIRPLANE, WAS NOT RADIO EQUIPPED.
Probable cause
THE PA-24 PILOT'S FAILURE TO MAINTAIN PROPER AIRSPEED WHILE EXECUTING A GO-AROUND, RESULTING IN THE STALLING OF THE AIRPLANE. A FACTOR IN THE ACCIDENT WAS THE PA-24 PILOT'S FAILURE TO VISUALLY DETECT THE J-3 IN A TIMELY MANNER.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL91LA135
- Event ID
- 20001212X17444
- Case number
- ATL91LA135
- 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: 75f126be9320a095542c4bdcccacea8e103b48570ef3f88c2b50168ddf9650c1; retrieved 2026-09-21T23:30:54.616Z.