CHI01FA024 · Piper PA28-140
Piper PA28-140 · Accident: in flight collision with object during initial climb
From Paul C. Miller-Sparta Airport (8D4) to Washington Manassas Harry P. Davis Field (HEF)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI01FA024
- 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
- 1 · 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 PA28-140
- 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
- N98094
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Paul C. Miller-Sparta Airport (8D4)To Washington Manassas Harry P. Davis Field (HEF), Manassas, VA
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 object
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Proper alignment, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane struck trees and terrain about 300 feet left of the extended runway centerline and about 1,000 feet from the departure and of the runway during an instrument takeoff. The weather at an airport 16 miles away was recorded as 1/4 statute miles visibility with fog and a vertical visibility of 100 feet. A witness reported weather at the accident airport as less than 1/8 mile visibility about 40 minutes after the accident. The pilot had accumulated a total of about 53 hours of instrument time with 9 of those hours in actual instrument conditions. The pilot had received a weather briefing prior to the accident, and had filed an IFR flight plan but did not obtain a departure clearance for the flight. A postaccident examination of the airframe, engine, and instruments revealed no anomalies that could be associated with a preexisting condition.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain proper runway alignment on departure and his failure to maintain clearance from the trees. The pilot's attempted flight into known adverse weather, his lack of instrument experience, the fog, and the trees were contributing factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI01FA024
- Event ID
- 20001212X22113
- Case number
- CHI01FA024
- 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: 37b50ff0ebb0e38fca2d6c3cd72188a2fe06b61bcaf3b04f67feaad44736c526; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:48:26.257Z.