FTW00FA035 · Piper PA-24-260
Piper PA-24-260 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Peter Prince Field (2R4) to Lakefront Airport (NEW)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW00FA035
- 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
- 4 · 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-24-260
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N8825P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Peter Prince Field (2R4), Milton, FLTo Lakefront Airport (NEW), LA
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern base
- 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/spin
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall/spin, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was number two in line behind traffic on a right base for runway 36R. The local controller asked the pilot if the visibility was hazy. The pilot replied, 'no it's not hazy uh it's just uh twilight (unintelligible) time.' When it appeared that the accident aircraft was lining up with runway 27, the local controller asked the pilot what his intentions were. The pilot advised local control that he would be turning downwind for runway 36R, but the local controller instructed him to turn right and enter a right base for runway 36R. The local controller asked the pilot if he had the runway in sight. The pilot replied 'roger.' A witness observed the aircraft flying slow at about 200 feet agl, with the wings level. The aircraft began a bank to the left and then a bank to the right. Then the aircraft's nose dropped, and it entered a left turn and descended from view. The airplane impacted the ground in a nose down attitude, and a fire erupted, which consumed the cockpit/cabin area. No structural or mechanical anomalies were observed during the post accident examination of the airplane.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control which resulted in a stall/spin. A contributing factor was the dusk light condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW00FA035
- Event ID
- 20001212X20097
- Case number
- FTW00FA035
- 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: 7999fb12863bbb540ef73da76db5e1903a64c6d99495633171fc110f1ea401e5; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:38:11.221Z.