NYC82DA039 · Piper PA-44-180T
Suffolk Co. Aircraft Piper PA-44-180T · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Middletown, PA to Wrightstown, NJ
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC82DA039
- 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
- 0
- 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-44-180T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-44
- 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
- N8226A
- Operator
- Suffolk Co. Aircraft
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From Middletown, PATo Wrightstown, NJ
- 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
- En route · descent
- 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
- Airport facilities, runway/landing area condition › Icy
- Airport facilities, runway/landing area condition › Snow covered
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
BEFORE TAKEOFF, THE PILOT GOT A WEATHER BRIEFING AND CALLED THE AIRPORT MANAGER AT THE DESTINATION. REPORTEDLY, THE DESTINATION AIRPORT WAS OPEN AND USABLE AT THAT TIME. IN FLIGHT, THE PILOT ASKED ATC ABOUT REPORTS OF ICING IN THE MT POCONO AREA AND GOT A NEGATIVE REPLY. WHILE DESCENDING TO THE DESTINATION, RIME ICE ACCUMULATED ON THE PLANE. DUE TO THE EXTRA WEIGHT, THE PILOT HELD 100 KTS ON FINAL APPROACH AND TOUCHED DOWN 100 TO 200 FT PAST THE THRESHOLD. THE 2600 FT RUNWAY APPEARED TO BE COVERED WITH ONLY LIGHT SNOW, BUT AS THE BRAKES WERE APPLIED, THE PILOT REALIZED THERE WAS POWDER SNOW OVER GLARE ICE. HE CONSIDERED, BUT REJECTED, A POSSIBLE GO-AROUND SINCE THERE WAS ICE ON THE PLANE AND TREES AT THE END OF THE RUNWAY. ALSO, IT WAS A DARK NIGHT AND THE PILOT WAS UNFAMILIAR WITH RISING TERRAIN NEAR THE AIRPORT. HE WAS UNABLE TO STOP ON THE RUNWAY. THE PLANE CONTINUED OFF THE END AND THE NOSEWHEEL HIT A DITCH AND FAILED. RUNWAY 05 ON THE AIRPORT WAS 4000 FT LONG, BUT WOULD HAVE REQUIRED A CIRCLING APPROACH.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC82DA039
- Event ID
- 20020917X02500
- Case number
- NYC82DA039
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1982-02-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 139fea803029adf98bfed86713bb188a62ed82ba4e8d27deb26b13a4bb119192; retrieved 2026-09-24T03:39:27.998Z.