BFO91LA063 · Piper PA-23-250
Piper PA-23-250 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport (SHD) to Hagerstown Regional Richard A Henson Field (HGR)
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO91LA063
- 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-23-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-23
- 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
- N63817
- Operator
- John Root
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport (SHD), Harrisonburg, VATo Hagerstown Regional Richard A Henson Field (HGR), Hagerstown, MD
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT WAS ADVISED DURING THE PREFLIGHT WEATHER BRIEFING THAT VFR FLIGHT WAS NOT RECOMMENDED. THE PILOT INDICATED, DURING THE BRIEFING, THAT HE WAS GOING TO FIND AN INSTRUCTOR OR SOMEBODY WITH AN INSTRUMENT RATING TO FLY HIM TO THE INTENDED DESTINATION. ABOUT TWO HOURS LATER THE PILOT DEPARTED ALONE; HE REPORTED THAT HE PLANNED TO EITHER TURN AROUND OR GO TO AN ALTERNATE AIRPORT, IF THE WEATHER EN ROUTE DETERIORATED. ACCORDING TO THE PILOT, HE PROCEEDED EN ROUTE BY FOLLOWING A HIGHWAY. HE LOST SIGHT OF THE GROUND, DUE TO FOG, SO HE TURNED AROUND, BUT AS HE DID SO, THE NOSE OF THE AIRPLANE PITCHED DOWN, AND AS HE RECOVERED, HE SAW TREES IN THE PATH OF THE AIRPLANE. THE PILOT STATED, 'I DECIDED IT WAS BEST TO PUT IT IN THE TREES.' THE PILOT SAID THE REASON THE NOSE PITCHED DOWN WAS FROM WINDS AROUND THE NEARBY MOUNTAINS, POSSIBLY CAUSING WIND SHEAR, AND WHICH HIS ALREADY SLOWER THAN NORMAL AIRSPEED, IT CAUSED HIM TO LOSE ALTITUDE.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S INADEQUATE INFLIGHT DECISION THAT RESULTED IN VFR FLIGHT INTO IMC.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO91LA063
- Event ID
- 20001212X17460
- Case number
- BFO91LA063
- 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: da7abe562a21b38156223dbf4a6935706a4ec045bcf56cce3561d24fe1311f7a; retrieved 2026-09-21T15:24:36.867Z.