FTW02LA066 · Piper PA-46T
Piper PA-46T · Accident: in flight encounter with weather on approach
From Ardmore Downtown Executive Airport (1F0) to Double Eagle II Airport (AEG)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW02LA066
- 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-46T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-46
- 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
- N87WW
- Operator
- Marvin C. Polzien · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ardmore Downtown Executive Airport (1F0), Ardmore, OKTo Double Eagle II Airport (AEG), Albuquerque, NM
- 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 encounter with weather
- 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 obtained/maintained
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Albuquerque, NM, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he checked the automated weather observing system (AWOS) before he executed an instrument landing system (ILS) approach, and it indicated "VFR" conditions. The pilot reported that at approximately 100 feet agl, the airplane descended from the clouds and was aligned right of the runway. The pilot attempted to align the airplane with the runway by banking left and then right. As the airplane banked right, the right wing struck the runway. Subsequently, the airplane impacted the runway, exited the runway to the south, and slid about 1,500 feet before coming to a stop upright. The pilot reported that at the time of the accident, snow was falling heavily, light turbulence was present, and the sky was obscured.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to obtain/maintain proper runway alignment. Contributing factors were the pilot's inadvertant flight into adverse weather conditions, the pilot not performing a missed approach, and the low ceiling and snow weather conditions .
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW02LA066
- Event ID
- 20020114X00065
- Case number
- FTW02LA066
- 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: 52155e7d575822eaf6274c7172c5c956e27771877b50687b456749a46eb37ca9; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:12:25.654Z.