CHI90LA099 · Piper PA28R
Piper PA28R · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Oakland County International Airport (PTK) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI90LA099
- 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 PA28R
- 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
- N4340K
- Operator
- Rouchdi Rifai
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oakland County International Airport (PTK), OAKLAND PONTIAC, MITo 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- 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 ACCIDENT AIRPLANE COLLIDED WITH TERRAIN WHILE ATTEMPTING A CROSSWIND LANDING. THE AIRPLANE SUSTAINED SUBSTANTIAL DAMAGE WHEN THE RIGHT MAIN LANDING GEAR COLLAPSED. THE PRIVATE RATED PILOT, THE ONLY PERSON ONBOARD, WAS NOT INJURED. THE PILOT STATED THAT THE FLIGHT WAS UNEVENTFUL UNTIL HE STARTED HIS APPROACH. HE GOES ON TO SAY THAT HIS CROSSWIND CORRECTION AND SPEED APPEARED TO BE ADEQUATE TO MAINTAIN RUNWAY ALIGNMENT AND THEN COMPLETES HIS STATEMENT BY RELATING HOW A SUDDEN GUST OF WIND PUSHED THE AIRCRAFT DOWNWARD CAUSING A HARD LANDING. AN AIRPORT WEATHER OBSERVATION TAKEN 5 MINUTES AFTER THE ACCIDENT REPORTED THE WIND AS BEING 80 DEGREES FROM THE RUNWAY AT 20 KNOTS. THE DEMONSTRATED CROSSWIND COMPONENT ON THIS AIRPLANE IS 17 KNOTS.
Probable cause
FAILURE OF THE PILOT TO MAINTAIN CONTROL OF THE ACCIDENT AIRPLANE DURING AN ATTEMPTED LANDING.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI90LA099
- Event ID
- 20001212X22688
- Case number
- CHI90LA099
- 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: e77ba2207a83c4395e401b23c48e659e3a1eba37bec9a2b4ab626601f6940145; retrieved 2026-09-23T06:40:17.480Z.