DEN87LA221 · Piper PA-28R-180
Clipper Club Piper PA-28R-180 · Accident: forced landing en route
From an unrecorded airport to Laramie Regional Airport (LAR)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN87LA221
- 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-28R-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
- N7494J
- Operator
- Clipper Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Laramie Regional Airport (LAR), Laramie, WY
- 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 · climb to 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
- Forced landing
- 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
- Aircraft performance, climb capability › Exceeded
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
N7494J TOOK OFF FROM A HIGH ALT ARPT AND CLIMBED IN THE VIC OF THE ARPT TO 9500 FEET BEFORE PROCEEDING ON COURSE. UPON APPROACHING HIGH TERRAIN THE PLT REALIZED HE DID NOT HAVE ENOUGH ALT TO CLEAR THE TERRAIN AND WAS IN A VALLEY TOO NARROW TO TURN AROUND. HE WAS HOLDING THE OVERRIDE TO DEACTIVATE THE AUTOMATIC LANDING GEAR EXTENSION SYSTEM WHEN THE ACFT ENCOUNTERED TURB AND HIS HAND CAME OFF THE OVERRIDE. THE LANDING GEAR EXTENDED AND THE ACFT LOST AIRSPEED. AT THAT POINT THE PLT DECIDED AN OFF ARPT FORCED LANDING WAS NECESSARY AND SELECTED A MOUNTAIN MEADOW. DURING THE LANDING IN ROUGH TERRAIN THE LANDING GEAR COLLAPSED.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN87LA221
- Event ID
- 20001213X31784
- Case number
- DEN87LA221
- 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: f8d1bab012cc9413338bccd52fe0f59dab1cced787f006595110b9eb845bc026; retrieved 2026-09-23T12:21:55.442Z.