NYC01LA208 · Piper J3C-65
Piper J3C-65 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Royalton Airport (9G5) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC01LA208
- 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 J3C-65
- Aircraft type
- Piper J3
- 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
- N6153H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Royalton Airport (9G5), Gasport, NYTo 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
- 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
- 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 obtained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The wind was reported as calm at an airport about 15 miles away from the departure airport. The pilot stated that at the departure airport, the windsock indicated winds from the west at 5 to 10 knots. He departed on runway 27, a 1,650-foot long, 50-foot wide, grass runway. The pilot further stated that during the initial climb, the airplane encountered light turbulence while climbing above the tree line. The airplane did not seem to climb as it normally would have. The pilot avoided the first hangar at the end of the runway by making a shallow turn to the left, but he could not avoid the second hangar. The airplane struck the second hangar and came to rest on the roof. The pilot added that there were no mechanical problems with the airplane. The second hangar was located about 75 to 100 left of the runway centerline, and set back from the first hangar that the pilot initially avoided. The second hangar was approximately 12 feet high and 50 feet wide, with a flat roof. The airplane was resting about 30 degrees nose down, into the roof of the hangar, and oriented to a heading of about 180 degrees. The engine and cockpit area forward of the wings had protruded through the hangar roof. The underside of the fuselage was buckled, but there was no apparent structural damage to the wings. Aside from the impact on the hangar roof, the airplane did not collide with any other structures. A Federal Aviation Administration inspector stated that runway 27 was maintained, and the grass was recently mowed. He added that, the airplane was within the weight and balance limitations during the takeoff.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to obtain a proper climb airspeed which resulted in an inadvertent stall and subsequent impact with a hangar.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC01LA208
- Event ID
- 20010820X01729
- Case number
- NYC01LA208
- 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: 33ab3c89a69b0999c2a3ca06511f285128a0d9d867267eda556c509f51f003f5; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:52:23.906Z.