BFO84FA008 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From W92 · BAYSE, VA to Montgomery County Airpark (GAI)
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO84FA008
- 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-28-140
- 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
- N75122
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From W92 · BAYSE, VATo Montgomery County Airpark (GAI), Gaithersburg, MD
- 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
- 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/mush
- 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 › Airspeed, not obtained
- Pilot in command › Impairment(alcohol)
- Pilot in command › Judgment, poor
- Pilot in command › Lift-off, premature
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
ACCORDING TO WITNESSES, THE ACFT BECAME AIRBORNE AFTER ROLLING ONLY ABOUT 1500 FT. IT WAS DESCRIBED A BEING 'BEHIND THE POWER CURVE' FOR A CONSIDERABLE DISTANCE BEFORE CLIMBING ABRUPTLY. THE ACFT THEN BANKED STEEPLY TO THE LEFT & COLLIDED WITH A RIDGE AT APRX 1840 FT MSL. THE ACCIDENT OCCURRED ABOUT 3 MILES SOUTH OF THE ARPT. THE ARPT ELEV WAS 1263 FT. AN INVESTIGATION REVEALED THAT THE ACFT WAS APRX 75 LBS OVER ITS MAX GROSS WT LIMIT DURING TAKEOFF. THE DENSITY ALT WAS COMPUTED TO BE 3000 FT. A CHECK OF THE PLT'S BLOOD SHOWED THAT IT HAD AN ALCOHOL LEVEL OF 0.158% (158 MG%), APRX 3 HRS AFTER THE ACCIDENT. A CHECK OF THE RGT FRONT SEAT OCCUPANTS BLOOD SHOWED AN ALCOHOL LEVEL OF 0.246% (246 MG%).
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO84FA008
- Event ID
- 20001214X40986
- Case number
- BFO84FA008
- 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: eb388974f0def84840d09b0f4f52bb146020ba36b55c7174b79c72a2d5d51ff6; retrieved 2026-09-21T17:26:41.348Z.