FTW00LA005 · Piper PA-36-285
Piper PA-36-285 · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From No airport to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW00LA005
- 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-36-285
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-36
- 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
- N4241U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From No airportTo 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Maneuvering · aerial application
- 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 object
- 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
- Wire, transmission; Wire, static
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was spraying a field using east-west headings. A 115,000-volt power line ran north-south along the eastern edge of the field. According to the FAA inspector and a witness, the pilot completed a spray run to the east and was turning the airplane to a westerly heading, re-entering the field, when the airplane contacted and severed a power transmission wire and a static wire. The airplane impacted the ground about 500 feet west of the power line, and a fire erupted, which consumed the airplane. According to the U.S. Naval Observatory, on the night of the accident, sunset occurred at 1929. The accident occurred approximately 1700, 2 1/2 hours before sunset. Toxicological testing revealed a concentration of 4.23 ug/ml of cyanide in a blood sample. This is likely a result of the fire. The toxicological testing was negative for drugs, alcohol, and carbon monoxide.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance with power wires while maneuvering during an aerial application flight. A factor was the sunglare.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW00LA005
- Event ID
- 20001212X19950
- Case number
- FTW00LA005
- 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: 98fb00bea27a76d00ffa1501458da54db919aed111e5bb98bae95b5789c65e9b; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:43:15.400Z.