NYC00FA248 · Piper PA-32R-301
Piper PA-32R-301 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Chatham Municipal Airport (CQX) to Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC00FA248
- 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
- 3 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-32R-301
- 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
- N8230G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chatham Municipal Airport (CQX), Chatham, MATo Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE), Philadelphia, PA
- 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
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was headed southwest, level at 8,000 feet, either in, or above instrument meteorological conditions. The pilot was instructed to change radio frequency, and after he checked in with the next sector controller, no further transmissions were heard from him. The airplane descended to 7,400 feet, then climbed to 8,500 feet over a period of 4 minutes. It remained at 8,500 feet for about a minute, then descended to and maintained between 8,100 and 8,200 feet for another minute. The airplane then made a descending turn to the right, with rates of descent up to approximately 16,000 feet per minute. The wreckage path was 1,900 feet in length, and began with parts from the airplane's tail section. About 500 feet from the beginning, was a section of the right wing, and 400 feet beyond that, the entire left wing. The stabilator spar and left wing separations exhibited downwards bending. The airplane was equipped with a vacuum-driven attitude indicator (AI) and directional gyro (DG). It also had a standby vacuum system, which required a reduction of power to properly operate. One low-vacuum annunciator light exhibited filament characteristics consistent with its being lit at the time of the accident. The other light was a diode-type, and could only be/was tested as operational. Post-accident examination found that the vacuum pump flex coupling was sheared, and the vacuum-driven instruments did not exhibit any rotational scoring. The vacuum pump coupling was manufactured in 1979. The manufacturer recommended changing the coupling every 6 years. There was no regulatory requirement to change the coupling, nor was there any regulatory requirement for redundant systems in case of vacuum system failure.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of control, and his subsequent overstress of the airplane after a vacuum system failure during flight in instrument meteorological conditions. Factors included the instrument meteorological conditions, a sheared coupling on the vacuum pump, the pilot/owner's failure to ensure the coupling was changed per the manufacturer's recommendations, a lack of regulatory requirement to ensure compliance with the manufacturer's recommendations, and a lack of regulatory requirement to ensure installation of a suitable backup system.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC00FA248
- Event ID
- 20001212X22048
- Case number
- NYC00FA248
- 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: bfa8ea919ae317d259c4596c273a46a0564743d5042ad9c7feb6c0df00c181df; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:52:52.937Z.