IAD00LA081 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From No airport to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD00LA081
- 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-28-180
- 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
- N15275
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From No airportTo not recorded
- 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
- 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
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot completed a landing to a 1,600-foot long grass airstrip. After landing, he taxied to the end of the runway, turned around, and prepared to make a short field take-off. The pilot set the flaps to 25 degrees, applied full power, pulled the yoke to the full aft position, and began the take-off roll. The airplane came off the ground about 1,200 feet down the runway. The pilot rated passenger stated the pilot 'pulled the aircraft up too much' after take-off, and the 'nose got too high.' He also stated, the stall warning light 'flickered' after passing over the departure end of the runway. The pilot stated there was not enough airspeed to maintain lift, and he turned the airplane to the left and landed hard in a field adjacent to the runway. The terrain rose about 1,500 feet beyond the departure end of the runway. The passenger stated that the rising terrain 'could be very deceiving', because from the take-off end of the runway, the terrain appeared closer than it actually was. Examination of the airplane revealed there were no mechanical deficiencies.
Probable cause
Pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control during take-off, which resulted in a stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD00LA081
- Event ID
- 20001212X21993
- Case number
- IAD00LA081
- 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: 74a399c75cb75ec9b1faee658f7e43a7c901ebdeaa7832a977ecceb9f39d8855; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:28:30.181Z.