NYC01LA092 · Piper PA-28R-180
Piper PA-28R-180 · Accident: in flight collision with object during takeoff
From Lexington (no airport) to Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport (SHD)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC01LA092
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- N4586J
- Operator
- Donald P. Jeffer, Jr · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lexington (no airport)To Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport (SHD), Weyer's Cave, VA
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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 object
- 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 › Planning/decision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot attempted a takeoff from a "slight upslope," 2,200-foot grass strip with random low spots. The takeoff was attempted after several days of rain, and the ground was still soggy. After liftoff, the airplane struck a 6-inch square wooden fence post at the departure end of the runway, which tore skin off a wing, and damaged the wing spar, aileron and anti-servo trim tab. The pilot then landed the airplane ahead, in an open field, about 300 feet beyond the departure end of the runway. During the landing, the right main landing gear collapsed. No mechanical malfunctions contributed to the accident. The owners handbook stated that takeoffs should be made with flaps up, but only provided takeoff distance data for airplanes configured with flaps 25 degrees, and maximum power from a paved, level, and dry runway. Winds were about 70 degrees off the airplane's nose, at 9 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for the runway conditions. Factors included the soggy runway conditions, and the lack of available takeoff performance data in the owners manual.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC01LA092
- Event ID
- 20010426X00821
- Case number
- NYC01LA092
- 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: ee9746bcd3a76a0b112b1b1af23ed17a4928c747fc94343fe035014b4f8163ea; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:03:31.242Z.