NYC99FA216 · Piper PA-34-200
Piper PA-34-200 · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Norwood Memorial Airport (OWD) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC99FA216
- 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
- 1 · 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-34-200
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-34
- 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
- N98FM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Norwood Memorial Airport (OWD), Norwood, MATo 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- 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
- Dual student › Control interference, improper
- Dual student › Panic
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Remedial action, inadequate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Plymouth, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot-under-instruction (PUI) was in the left seat, and the flight instructor was in the right seat for the multi-engine instructional flight. The PUI was performing a simulated engine-out approach, with the right engine set at zero thrust. On short final, the airplane's airspeed began to bleed off. The instructor told the PUI to add power, which he did, but because of insufficient rudder input, the airplane drifted to the right. The instructor announced he was taking control of the airplane, then took control of it, and the PUI relinquished control. Due to the low altitude, and with the airplane stabilized, the instructor decided to land the airplane in the grass next to the runway. However, the PUI grabbed the yoke, pulled back on it, and started screaming. Both pilots struggled for control, as the airplane went below minimum control airspeed, then struck the ground in a high right-angle of bank. Prior to the accident flight, the instructor had called an examiner to cancel the PUI's upcoming check ride. At that time, the instructor had characterized the PUI, when flying, as unpredictable, and someone who would 'do unusual things on his own.'
Probable cause
The flight instructor's inadequate remedial action, and the pilot-under-instruction's panic and subsequent interference with the flight controls.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC99FA216
- Event ID
- 20001212X19618
- Case number
- NYC99FA216
- 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: 5dc005ccc9f8783dec3b8dc7ae950338275f99d49078957de698303d2a31b857; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:50:19.090Z.