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NYC00LA089 · Piper PA-28-161

5 Mar 2000 · West Milford, NJ, United States

Hortman Aviation Services Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing

From Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE) to 4N1

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Event

NTSB case
NYC00LA089
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-28-161

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
N2761M
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE), Philadelphia, PATo 4N1
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 · landing roll
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 on ground/water
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 › Directional control, not maintained

Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of West Milford, NJ, the place the record names. Not the accident site.

NTSB narrative

While landing on Runway 6, a 4,000 foot-long, 60 foot-wide, asphalt runway, the airplane began to veer to the left and the pilot attempted a go-around. The airplane departed the left side of the runway, where it began to strike rocks and bushes. The airplane then entered a gully, where it came rest, about 350 feet before the departure end of the runway. The pilot stated he did not experience any mechanical problems with the airplane. Winds reported at an airport about 18 miles south of the accident site, were from 320 degrees, at 11 knots, with 16 knot gusts. Additionally, a witness stated that at the time of the accident the crosswind was 'strong and gusty.'

Probable cause

The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during landing. A factor in this accident was the gusty crosswind conditions.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record NYC00LA089
Event ID
20001212X20717
Case number
NYC00LA089
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: 5dd9f21771793fd2b8b5f59457901c74d148e80ba44c249ce80c12690340ee2f; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:17:50.737Z.