DEN99LA074 · Piper PA-28-180
Garland Brothers Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: on ground/water collision with object during takeoff
From an unrecorded airport to Northeast Wyoming Regional Airport (GCC)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN99LA074
- 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-28-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N7942W
- Operator
- Garland Brothers
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Northeast Wyoming Regional Airport (GCC), Gillette, WY
- 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- 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
- On ground/water collision with object
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Landing was made on a 1,300 compacted used asphalt surfaced road. Approximately one half the distance was used for the landing and the pilot said he thought he could take off safely because of his landing distance and because he had half fuel and was alone in the aircraft. He rotated the aircraft for take off as he was running out of road on his takeoff roll. The aircraft struck a fence with the landing gear and then impacted into a tractor severing the left wing. The aircraft slid to a stop in a farm field. There was no fire. Calculated performance provided information that on a paved surface the takeoff roll flaps up was 1,250 feet and with 25 flaps 1,150 feet. Density altitude was approximately 6,000 feet msl.
Probable cause
The pilots' inadequate preflight planning for take off in that he failed to consider the takeoff surface not being a paved surface. A factor was loose material on the roadway used for take off.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN99LA074
- Event ID
- 20001212X18746
- Case number
- DEN99LA074
- 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: 6a0f71a94c73aeff2a0c61ab941edfa73b49ecae84ee6627a0c1b4a46a650b07; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:19:17.201Z.