NYC00FA245 · Piper PA-24-250
Piper PA-24-250 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Eastern WV Regional Airport/Shepherd Field (MRB) to Columbia Metropolitan Airport (CAE)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC00FA245
- 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
- 2 · 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-24-250
- 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
- N6411P
- Operator
- Jack A. Gambino · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From Eastern WV Regional Airport/Shepherd Field (MRB), Martinsburg, WVTo Columbia Metropolitan Airport (CAE), Columbia, SC
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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 › VFR flight into imc, performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument rated pilot was conducting a cross county flight from New York to Florida. Radar data revealed the airplane was traveling southwest and was level at 8,700 feet, when it made a right turn at 1727:42. The airplane continued to the right and at 1727:47, the airplane's altitude indicated 8,500 feet. The airplane descended to 8,300 feet at 1727:51, and 5,300 feet at 1728:05. There were no further radar returns observed from the airplane. Witnesses reported observing the airplane break-up in-flight, before the main wreckage impacted a sidewalk. All major portions of the airplane were located with-in 1/4 to 1/2 miles of the main wreckage. Weather information obtained for the flight indicated an area of instrument flight rules (IFR) conditions in the immediate vicinity of the accident site. A larger area of marginal visual meteorological conditions surrounded the IFR area. There was no record that the pilot had received a pre-flight weather briefing prior to the flight. The airplane's most recent annual inspection was performed 13 months prior to the accident. The pilot's estimate total flight experience was about 400 hours. He pilot had logged 2 hours of 'actual' and 36 hours of 'simulated' instrument flight experience; all of which had been logged about 10 years prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's attempted VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions that resulted in spatial disorientation. A factor in this accident was the pilot's inadequate preflight planning.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC00FA245
- Event ID
- 20001212X21826
- Case number
- NYC00FA245
- 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: 03dc9a6eba1b9102c3e89a70898119c893db204544ce510ad0a5810cd0e91afb; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:54:10.240Z.