CHI00LA310 · Piper PA-32-260
Piper PA-32-260 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during takeoff
From Gradolph Field (88G) to Eaton Rapids, MI
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00LA310
- 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-32-260
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N33117
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gradolph Field (88G)To Eaton Rapids, MI
- 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
- 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 › Aborted takeoff, not performed
- Pilot in command › Altitude/clearance, not obtained/maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane impacted corn immediately after takeoff from a grass runway and was destroyed by a post impact fire. The pilot said he was departing on runway 27 using a short field takeoff procedure. He said that the wind was 270 degrees at 5-7 knots. He said that, during the takeoff, the airplane "settled back on down. He said that the airplane became airborne again but couldn't clear the corn crop at the end of the runway. The pilot said that the grass on the west end of the runway was about 8 inches high. In his written report, the pilot listed no mechanical malfunction of the aircraft. A postaccident examination of the aircraft failed to reveal any preexisting anomalies. The inspector also noted that the grass on the runway was about 3 inches high and the grass was "very damp but firm." A weather report for a reporting station located about 13 nautical miles and 85 degrees magnetic was reporting winds, about 20 minutes after the accident, as 130 degrees at 3 knots.
Probable cause
the pilots failure to abort the takeoff and obtain/maintain clearance from the corn crop. Factors were the tall, wet, grass runway, and the corn crop.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00LA310
- Event ID
- 20001212X21941
- Case number
- CHI00LA310
- 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: ff94326ec53a7744343c22ef74ad52ae3b069a38390847b30127cafb5061fddc; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:24:48.613Z.