NYC01LA120 · Piper PA-32RT-300
Piper PA-32RT-300 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From Teterboro Airport (TEB) to Ithaca Tompkins Regional Airport (ITH)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC01LA120
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-32RT-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N36127
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Teterboro Airport (TEB), TETERBORO, NJTo Ithaca Tompkins Regional Airport (ITH), Ithaca, NY
- 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 · IFR final approach
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › IFR procedure, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was assigned a cruise altitude of 6,000 feet msl. Radar recorded the airplane at 5,900 feet msl. While in IMC, the airplane was vectored on to the final approach course for an ILS approach. At localizer intercept, the airplane was descending approximately 500 fpm. When the airplane was 5 miles from the LOM, the controller advised the pilot he was cleared for the approach, and that radar services were terminated. The airplane crossed the LOM approximately a 1/4 mile right of course, and within 100 feet of the glide-slope crossing altitude of 2,837 feet msl. After the LOM, the decent rate slowed to approximately 400 fpm, and the airplane continued to descend for about 1 minute 38 seconds. The airplane leveled at 2,200 feet msl, and remained at that altitude until radar contact was lost about a minute later. Approximately 2 miles from the airport, the pilot looked outside, to see if he could acquire the ground visually. He saw the ground approaching from the front of the airplane seconds before impact. The airplane impacted the ground, and came to rest about 80 feet below the elevation of the runway. Prior to impact, the pilot thought the airplane was in level flight approximately 1,000 feet agl. The pilot reported no failure or malfunctions with the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to follow the published instrument approach procedure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC01LA120
- Event ID
- 20010517X00942
- Case number
- NYC01LA120
- 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: cb268f166e213d1af612b1e979b28ce6a21439ec338116e2e1e51efd700b31ff; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:57:18.965Z.