DEN99LA101 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during initial climb
From N/A to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN99LA101
- 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-28-140
- 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
- N7556R
- Operator
- Jeffrey W. Wood · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From N/ATo 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
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Performance data, exceeded
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on takeoff roll from a 2,250 foot long private air strip the aircraft became airborne then settled back to the ground off the end of the departure runway. The runway was dirt surface and the pilot was making his takeoff to the east. Wind at the time was from 290 degrees at 10 knots with gusts to 17 knots. Aircraft performance data provided information that the aircraft was within 70 pounds of its maximum certificated gross weight and that the takeoff chart upper limit was 7,000 foot density altitude. The actual density altitude was 7,700 feet. According to the chart, which was based on a hard surface runway, no wind, and the aircraft at maximum certificated gross weight, the takeoff roll should have been 1,750 feet. The chart also stated that extending the curves above the 7,000 foot upper limit was not permissible. The pilot said he thought he encountered a wind shear during rotation.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight planning and preparation for the runway and the environment in which he intended to fly. Factors were high-density altitude and a dirt runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN99LA101
- Event ID
- 20001212X18979
- Case number
- DEN99LA101
- 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, departure. 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: ac190dd389774efb7ce19bcf848c41085ec8ca418ed8ab4099ef11f361bba333; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:52:24.402Z.