NYC01LA097 · Piper PA-34-200
Piper PA-34-200 · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Washington Manassas Harry P. Davis Field (HEF) to Hagerstown Regional Richard A Henson Field (HGR)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC01LA097
- 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-34-200
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-34
- 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
- N55134
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Washington Manassas Harry P. Davis Field (HEF), Manassas, VATo Hagerstown Regional Richard A Henson Field (HGR), Hagerstown, 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
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Proper alignment, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot requested and was cleared for the ILS Runway 27 approach. While on final, the airplane encountered light to occasional moderate turbulence, and required a 30-40 degree drift correction to maintain course. When the airplane was 2 miles from the runway, the tower controller reported the wind as 300 degrees at 18 knots. The pilot continued the approach and 100 to 50 feet above the ground felt the crosswind "dramatically" subside. The pilot was then able to maintain runway alignment with no wind correction. The landing phase continued without incident until the airplane was 3-5 feet above the runway. The pilot then felt a "significant and abrupt" buffeting of the airplane. The airplane "weather-vaned" to the right, rolled left, and started to drift left of the centerline. The pilot applied corrective action; however, the airplane touched down nose wheel first, bounced back into the air, and then touched down nose wheel first again. The nose gear collapsed and the propellers contacted the runway.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain runway alignment during the landing phase. A factor in the accident was a sudden change in wind direction and speed.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC01LA097
- Event ID
- 20010502X00850
- Case number
- NYC01LA097
- 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: 029c584d099b0c03ff821c109fbb38b86e233554683463729a77e430e6acaed3; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:02:25.601Z.