DEN91FA111 · Piper PA-32-300
Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: forced landing during initial climb
From Colorado Springs, CO to 2A3 · Bessemer, AL
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN91FA111
- 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-32-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N44641
- Operator
- John J. Wilda · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Colorado Springs, COTo 2A3 · Bessemer, AL
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Forced 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 › Aircraft weight and balance, exceeded
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE COMMERCIAL RATED PILOT AND HIS FIVE PASSENGERS DEPARTED COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO, ON A PROPOSED CROSS COUNTRY FLIGHT TO ALABAMA. THE AIRCRAFT WAS OBSERVED TO CLIMB TO 150 FEET VERY SLOWLY AND THEN LEVEL OFF. THE PILOT SAID IN A POSTACCIDENT INTERVIEW THAT THE AIRCRAFT WOULD NOT CLIMB OR ACCELERATE NORMALLY. HE SAID AS THE AIRSPEED DETERIORATED, HE WAS FORCED TO MAKE AN EMERGENCY LANDING TO UNSUITABLE TERRAIN. THE INVESTIGATION REVEALED THE AIRCRAFT WAS 311 POUNDS OVER MAXIMUM ALLOWABLE GROSS WEIGHT. DENSITY ALTITUDE WAS 7,500 FEET.
Probable cause
THE PILOT EXCEEDED WEIGHT AND BALANCE LIMITATIONS. FACTORS WERE: HIGH DENSITY ALTITUDE AND UNSUITABLE TERRAIN.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN91FA111
- Event ID
- 20001212X17840
- Case number
- DEN91FA111
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: 7625d6601751130164578884ea3c2d32527632ec09a4f7cd7cf474842c0a4723; retrieved 2026-09-21T15:22:32.316Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure. The narrative states "THE COMMERCIAL RATED PILOT AND HIS FIVE PASSENGERS DEPARTED COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO, ON A PROPOSED CROSS COUNTRY FLIGHT TO ALABAMA"; the departure was not recorded.