BFO86LA043 · Piper 601P
Piper 601P · Accident: hard landing
From Laurence G Hanscom Field (BED) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO86LA043
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper 601P
- Aircraft type
- Piper 601
- 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
- N9756Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Laurence G Hanscom Field (BED), Bedford, MATo 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Stall
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Flare, misjudged
- Pilot in command › Proper alignment, not attained
- Pilot in command › Stall, premature
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE OWNER OF THE AEROSTAR 601P WAS FLYING HIS FAMILY AND A FRIEND FROM BEDFORD, MASSACHUSETTS TO INDIAN HEAD, MARYLAND. AFTER MONITORING THE DCA ATIS HE ELECTED TO MAKE AN ILS TO FORT BELVOIR, VIRGINIA, BREAK OFF THE MISSED APPROACH AND PROCEED VFR OVER TO MARYLAND AIRPORT FOR A LANDING. HE STATED THAT HE SAW THE RUNWAY FROM A RIGHT BASE POSITION AND TURNED ONTO FINAL FOR RUNWAY 17. AFTER FLARING FOR LANDING THE AIRPLANE STALLED AND IMPACTED THE GROUND TO THE LEFT OF THE RUNWAY. THE LEFT GEAR COLLAPSED AS DID THE NOSE GEAR AS THE AIRCRAFT SLID DOWN THE LEFT SIDE OF THE RUNWAY AND CAME TO REST ABOUT 1000 FEET FROM THE APPROACH END OF THE RUNWAY.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO86LA043
- Event ID
- 20001213X34409
- Case number
- BFO86LA043
- 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: 71a5dbe409aa9b6aaf2205903595ed0b381dc1ac4efb739be02603476dd40c3d; retrieved 2026-09-23T14:07:02.228Z.