NYC02LA167 · Piper PA32-300
Piper PA32-300 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather on approach
From Hartford Brainard Airport (HFD) to Chatham Municipal Airport (CQX)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC02LA167
- 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 PA32-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA32
- 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
- N20787
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hartford Brainard Airport (HFD), Hartford, CTTo Chatham Municipal Airport (CQX), Chatham, MA
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Pilot in command › Proper touchdown point, not obtained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot performed a instrument approach to runway 6, a 3,001 foot-long, asphalt runway. He was in and out of clouds, but maintained visual contact with the runway. When the airplane was about 600 feet over the approach end of runway 6, he began a left turn and entered the traffic pattern for runway 24. While on final approach, at an altitude of about 300 feet, the pilot lost visual contact with the runway. The pilot said he was "too low and slow to do a missed approach and attempted to land." The airplane touched down "too far down" the runway and the pilot was unable to stop before the airplane departed the end of the runway, traveled down an embankment, and collided with trees. The weather reported at the airport, near the time of the accident included: winds from 200 degrees at 12 knots, with 18 knot gusts; 10 miles visibility; and an overcast ceiling at 500 feet.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper in-flight decision to continue the landing after losing visual contact with the runway, which resulted in his failure to obtain the proper touchdown point, and the subsequent overrun. Factors in this accident were the clouds and low ceiling.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC02LA167
- Event ID
- 20020828X01470
- Case number
- NYC02LA167
- 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, coordinates. 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: 378a0f76d923c1b4ccd17d08426e459101fe31f50e1089d8c7ac07d1239f40cf; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:29:41.235Z.