CHI00LA264 · Piper PA-28-235
Piper PA-28-235 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Jackson County Airport/Reynolds Field (JXN) to Mackinac Island Airport (MCD)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00LA264
- 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-28-235
- 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
- N9174W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jackson County Airport/Reynolds Field (JXN), Jackson, MITo Mackinac Island Airport (MCD)
- 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 final
- 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
- 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
- Descent › Excessive
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said his flight was uneventful until the final approach to landing on runway 08 at the Mackinac Island, Michigan, Airport (MCD). The airport winds were reported as 3-4 knots from the north. "Over the threshold, the left wing [of the airplane] went up to approximately 35-40 degrees." The pilot said that he was able to "stabilize the aircraft just prior to touchdown. The initial landing was hard, and the plane porpoised prior to the second touchdown." The pilot said the airplane then veered to the left. "The plane continued on to the grassy area on the left side of the runway and the nose gear collapsed." Following the accident, the pilot observed a large American flag, south of the runway, "standing straight out (north to south)." An examination of the airplane revealed no anomalies. Nine minutes prior to the accident, the automated weather observation system at the airport reported clear skies, 10 miles visibility, winds 360 degrees at 6 knots, temperature 65 degrees F, dew point 35 degrees F, and altimeter 30.27 inches of Mercury. Six minutes prior to the accident, the Automated Surface Observation System at Alpina, Michigan, 66 miles from MCD at 140 degrees, reported clear skies, 10 miles visibility, winds 320 degrees at 11 knots, gusts to 18 knots, temperature 65 degrees F, dew point 37 degrees F, and altimeter 30.26 inches of Mercury. The Airport/Facilities Directory for the Mackinac Island Airport, states in the remarks section, "AWOS-3 winds unreliable due to trees north of the runway."
Probable cause
the pilot not maintaining aircraft control in response to the uncommanded roll, and the excessive descent to the runway resulting in the hard landing. Factors relating to the accident were the pilot's attempted recovery from the uncommanded roll, the high crosswind, the pilot's recovery from the bounced landing, and his inadequate preflight planning in preparing for the wind conditions at the airport.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00LA264
- Event ID
- 20001212X21684
- Case number
- CHI00LA264
- 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: 55cedb953cd0fd03c25c9e170df84f6630535745f2b09e5de1851f453a6cdc00; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:33:30.564Z.