FTW88FA085 · Piper PA-24-260
Piper PA-24-260 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Pierce Airport (TE10) to Deming Municipal Airport (DMN)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW88FA085
- 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
- 2 · 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-24-260
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N8553P
- Operator
- Jeffery W. Pierce · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pierce Airport (TE10)To Deming Municipal Airport (DMN), Deming, NM
- 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
- 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 › Flight into known adverse weather, initiated
- Pilot in command › Planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PLT WAS GIVEN A PRE-FLT WX BRIEFING BY A FSS BRIEFER. HE RCVD A FULL & THOROUGH BRIEFING, EXCEPT THE BRIEFER DID NOT HAVE AN OPNL WX RADAR SET AVAILABLE. THE PLT WAS ADZD OF A LINE OF THUNDERSTORMS (TSTMS) TO THE SOUTHWEST, MOVING EAST AT 20 KTS. HE WAS ALSO GIVEN A PIREP CONCERNING A TSTM 20 MI SOUTH OF WICHITA FALLS (SW OF HENRIETTA), RPRTDLY MOVING NORTH. WITNESSES SAID THE ACFT TOOK OFF DOWNWIND, HAD DIFFICULTY GETTING AIRBORNE, THEN MADE AN ABRUPT RGT TURN INTO A LOW CEILING. SHORTLY THEREAFTER, A WITNESS SAW IT COME OUT OF THE CLOUDS & CRASH APRX 1-1/2 MI SOUTHEAST OF THE ARPT. IMPACT OCCURRED IN A STEEP LEFT WING DOWN, SLIGHTLY NOSE LOW, ATTITUDE. NO PREIMPACT PART FAILURE/MALFUNCTION WAS FND. A WITNESS SAID THAT JUST BFR TAKEOFF, THERE WAS A HVY DOWNPOUR OF RAIN WITH SMALL HAIL, LIGHTNING & THUNDER. THERE WERE INDCNS THE PLT WAS HURRYING TO DEPART BFR A CLNC VOID TIME OF 0900 CST. HE TOOK OFF ABT 8 MIN BFR THE VOID TIME. ACCORDING TO SPECS, THE ATTITUDE INDICATOR WOULD HAVE NEEDED A 3 MIN SPIN-UP TIME TO ACHIEVE ITS RATED PERFORMANCE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW88FA085
- Event ID
- 20001213X25470
- Case number
- FTW88FA085
- 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: d2f75141fb5597851dfbdfa4c9257b4a3c9ea715a638c266af8c63d4d9864060; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:46:41.602Z.