CHI99LA313 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Pawnee City Municipal Airport (50K) to Central Nebraska Regional Airport (GRI)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99LA313
- 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
- N5535U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pawnee City Municipal Airport (50K)To Central Nebraska Regional Airport (GRI), Grand Island, NE
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Stall; 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane took off from a 3,375' turf runway to the northwest. The pilot said he rotated the airplane at 80 mph and started his climb out. At approximately 100 feet above the ground, he noticed the airplane begin to descend. 'The plane started to settle in as if [the] lift was gone.' The pilot checked his airspeed indicator to be sure it read 80 mph or better, which it did. He said he didn't notice any drop in engine power. At this same time, the nose of the airplane began to turn towards the west. 'Nose of the plane was pushed towards [the] left - no wing drop in turn.' The pilot said he remembered clipping at least two trees, but not hitting the ground. Following the accident, the pilot noticed a strong wind out of the southeast. Examination of the wreckage revealed that the wing flaps were up. No other anomalies were found.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed which resulted in an inadvertent stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99LA313
- Event ID
- 20001212X19461
- Case number
- CHI99LA313
- 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: a875fb1168cc06c1f1cf8a5c7843b0a3dffb6cac3aaddb7f244ebcba1ccf78ef; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:24:44.231Z.