CHI00LA228 · Piper PA-34-200T
Bear River Aviation Piper PA-34-200T · Accident: abrupt maneuver during landing
From Coleman A. Young Municipal Airport (DET) to D87
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00LA228
- 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-34-200T
- 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
- N345CD
- Operator
- Bear River Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Coleman A. Young Municipal Airport (DET), Detroit, MITo D87
- 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
- Abrupt maneuver
- 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 › Go-around, not performed
- Pilot in command › Wrong runway, selected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that prior to landing, he called the UNICOM for wind information. He was informed that the winds were calm, so he elected to land on runway 28. He reported that the landing approach was high and he touched down 1/3 to 1/2 way down the 4,157-foot long, wet runway. He reported he applied full brakes, but the airplane did not slow down. The pilot reported that it was too late to perform a go-around so he decided to keep the airplane on the ground. The pilot made an intentional sharp left turn to avoid a fence at the end of the runway and the right main gear collapsed when it contacted the grass off the side of the runway. The airplane came to rest almost 180 degrees to the direction of landing. The pilot reported the local winds were from 080 degrees at 7 knots. He reported, 'A flight over the wind sock would have prevented this mishap.'
Probable cause
the pilot selected the wrong runway direction in which to land and he did not perform a go-around when he realized the landing approach was too high. Factors associated with the accident were the tailwind condition, the improper glidepath, and the intentional ground loop/swerve, and the fence at the end of the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00LA228
- Event ID
- 20001212X21415
- Case number
- CHI00LA228
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2000-07-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ad6ee7e241c4cfe8abf5c8b47de23dd839e0dfdf0bbc4e186dbcff9f3844d439; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:38:44.920Z.