DEN99LA156 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather during initial climb
From 00V to Laramie Regional Airport (LAR)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN99LA156
- 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
- N5172L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 00VTo Laramie Regional Airport (LAR), Laramie, 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
- 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 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
- Stall/mush
- 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 › Stall/mush, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to takeoff, the pilot observed the winds to be out of the northwest at 10 knots, and he selected runway 33 for departure. He performed a density altitude calculation and it was determined to be 9,747 feet msl. Takeoff was normal, and the pilot climbed out at 80 mph. During initial climb, the airspeed dropped to 60 mph. He lowered the nose to gain airspeed and flew the aircraft under a set of power lines. Shortly thereafter, the aircraft impacted slightly inclining terrain. The four occupants exited the aircraft, and the airplane was subsequently consumed by fire. At 1154, the closest reporting weather facility located 10.4 nm to the southwest was reporting the winds to be from 110 degrees at 7 knots. At 1254, the winds were variable at 4 knots. Several pilots in the area reported encountering sudden windshift conditions near the time of the accident. According to calculated weight and balance data, the aircraft was slightly under maximum gross weight and within center of gravity limits at takeoff. There is no performance data in the Airplane Flight Manual for takeoffs above 7,000 feet density altitude.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of control resulting in inadvertent stall/mush during initial climb following takeoff. Factors were the unfavorable, sudden windshift conditions, the high density altitude, and the manufacturer's failure to provide adequate density altitude performance information in the Airplane Flight Manual.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN99LA156
- Event ID
- 20001212X19499
- Case number
- DEN99LA156
- 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: d4b314cf587066f280c99dbab6b54e30f3e5a58f227e828e79957d469f6908ce; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:50:56.707Z.