NYC00LA215 · Piper PA28-180
Piper PA28-180 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during takeoff
From NY (no airport) to Albany International Airport (ALB)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC00LA215
- 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 PA28-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N132SF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From NY (no airport)To Albany International Airport (ALB), Albany, NY
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a cross county flight with three passengers, the airplane's upper door latch opened and the pilot intended to perform a precautionary landing a nearby airport to secure the door. The pilot landed on a 1,500-foot long private grass strip, secured the door attempted to depart the grass strip to the east. The pilot aborted his first attempt to takeoff, because the airplane was unable to takeoff within a 'reasonable' distance of the end of the runway. During the second attempt, the airplane became airborne about 500 feet before the end of the runway, and the pilot lowered the airplane's nose 'to accelerate while remaining in ground effect.' Near the end of the runway, the pilot pitched the airplane up; however, the airplane began to descend towards a cornfield and impacted terrain. The pilot did not report any mechanical problems with the airplane. According to the pilot 'the airplane was near gross weight, but definitely under gross weight.' He also stated 'once on the ground I should have off loaded all passengers luggage and perhaps some fuel before taking off.' Using the temperature, dew point, and altimeter setting, reported at a nearby airport, the estimated density altitude at the accident site was calculated to be about 2,188 feet. Review of the takeoff distance chart located in the airplane owner's manual, revealed a takeoff distance of 900 feet from a 'paved, level, dry, runway.' The chart did not include takeoff distances for takeoffs from grass surfaces.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper decision to attempt a second takeoff from the short grass runway at maximum gross weight, which resulted in the inadvertent stall/mush. Factors in this accident were the airplane's high gross weight and the short grass surface runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC00LA215
- Event ID
- 20001212X21830
- Case number
- NYC00LA215
- 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: d122a2ac93298c8f777987051bec7e4c124369b187bf8955d0d087e777cea520; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:08:26.395Z.