MIA01LA220 · Piper J-4A
Piper J-4A · Accident: in flight collision with object during landing
From TN to TN
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA01LA220
- 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
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 1
- 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 J-4A
- Aircraft type
- Piper J-4
- 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
- N27848
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From TNTo TN
- 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 · aborted
- 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
- 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
- Utility pole; Wire, transmission
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, substantiated by two witness statements, his first landing attempt to the 800-foot grass strip resulted in an extended flare due to a tail wind, and his subsequent go-around attempt resulted in collision with power lines at the departure end of the runway. The secondary collision with the terrain was actually a head-on collision with a pickup truck that resulted in fatal injuries to the driver. The aircraft was destroyed by postcrash fire, and the truck, power lines, power transformer, and fencing sustained substantial damage. The pilot and a second truck occupant received minor injuries. The pilot reported no precrash mechanical abnormalities with the aircraft.
Probable cause
The failure of the student pilot to maintain altitude clearance during a balked landing go-around resulting in the collision with a utility pole, transmission wires, and a ground borne vehicle.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA01LA220
- Event ID
- 20010822X01753
- Case number
- MIA01LA220
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: 43066b52eb6857492ad574239517e67178590e9eaea8c1c59b1d6a4b1df5b1d0; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:24:27.180Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: damage. The narrative states "The aircraft was destroyed by postcrash fire"; the substantial damage it names is to the truck, power lines, transformer and fencing.