CHI00FA263 · Piper PA-28-161
Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Watertown Municipal Airport (RYV) to Baraboo Wisconsin Dells Regional Airport (DLL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00FA263
- 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
- 3 · 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
- N8126V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Watertown Municipal Airport (RYV), Watertown, WITo Baraboo Wisconsin Dells Regional Airport (DLL), Baraboo, WI
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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/mush
- 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/mush, encountered
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot preformed a downwind takeoff and while on initial climb lost control of the airplane, subsequently impacting the terrain. The airplane was destroyed during a post-impact fire. The pilot selected runway 11 for the takeoff. The wind at the time of the accident was 300 degrees magnetic at 10 knots. The airplane was approximately 189 lbs over the certified maximum gross weight at the beginning of the flight. No anomalies were found with the airplane or its flight control systems that could be associated with a pre-impact condition. No anomalies were found with the engine or its related systems that could be associated with a pre-impact condition.
Probable cause
Aircraft control not being maintained during initial climb resulting in a stall/mush. Factors to the accident were the pilot's inadequate preflight planning/preparation, the pilot operating over the airplane's certified maximum gross weight, and the pilot selecting the wrong runway which resulted in a downwind takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00FA263
- Event ID
- 20001212X21658
- Case number
- CHI00FA263
- 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: 8b2687d2add0edf7d22c0cf462e0d5690dbc47977bdcbeb7a09d7ecf4683c551; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:55:55.708Z.