NYC86FA096 · Piper PA-24-180
Piper PA-24-180 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From Hartford Brainard Airport (HFD) to Ellington Airport (7B9)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC86FA096
- 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
- 5 · 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-24-180
- 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
- N6599P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hartford Brainard Airport (HFD), Hartford, CTTo Ellington Airport (7B9), Ellington, CT
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern turn to base
- 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 terrain/water
- 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 › Proper altitude, not maintained
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Somers, CT, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
THE ACFT, ON A NIGHT FLT, WAS SEEN FLYING ABOUT 1 MI WEST OF ELLINGTON ARPT. A WITNESS SAW THE ACFT FLYING NORTH AND JUST ABOVE THE 800 FT HIGH TERRAIN. THE ACFT WAS IN A GRADUAL DESCENT AND IT APPEARED THAT IT WOULD NOT CLEAR TERRAIN AHEAD. AFTERWARDS THE WITNESS SAW A GLOW EMITTING AND SMOKE RISING FROM THE ACCIDENT SITE. THE ACFT CAME TO REST AT AN ELEVATION OF 800 FT AND 2.2 MILES NORTHEAST OF THE ARPT. THE WRECKAGE WAS SCATTERED A DISTANCE OF ABOUT 300 FT ANDORIENTED ON A 335 DEGS MAG HDG. THE ARPT ELEV IS 235 FT MSL AND THE TRAFFIC PATTERN IS 1250 FT MSL. EXAMINATION OF THE ACFT DID NOT DISCLOSE EVIDENCE OF MALFUNCTION. THERE WAS NO EVIDENCE OF PILOT INCAPACITATION OR IMPAIRMENT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC86FA096
- Event ID
- 20001213X33156
- Case number
- NYC86FA096
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1986-03-31.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d9685e7f079372597a08214d1edb9b5f9f67518c14a6de180755cf96f8c4392c; retrieved 2026-09-21T04:37:24.966Z.