ATL03LA015 · Piper PA-28-181
Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: on ground/water collision with object during landing
From Richard Arthur Field (M95) to Richard Arthur Field (M95)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL03LA015
- 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 PA-28-181
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N8389Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Richard Arthur Field (M95), Fayette, ALTo Richard Arthur Field (M95), Fayette, AL
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- On ground/water collision with object
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, poor
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Upon arriving at the destination airport the pilot was unable to activate the runway lights. According to witnesses, the runway lights at the airport were inoperative. In an effort to facilitate a night landing, the pilot requested assistance from the local sheriff department. The sheriff's department requested assistance of friends and employees of the airport to align their vehicles along the side of the runway and turned on their headlights to illuminate the runway. The pilot made two unsuccessful attempts to land. On the third attempt the airplane landed and struck one of the cars parked along the side of the runway. The airplane rolled over, and slid down the runway. The airplane came to rest inverted. There is no record of the pilot obtaining notice to airmen regarding the inoperative runway lights. Examination of the airplane revealed that the left wing was separated from the airplane. The pilot did not report any mechanical problems with the airplane prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's poor inflight decision to land on a non illuminated runway, and the pilot's failure to maintain clearance during an attempted night landing that resulted in an on ground collision with a parked car. A factor was the light condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL03LA015
- Event ID
- 20021113X05461
- Case number
- ATL03LA015
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2002-11-08.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1e58e6fb11640d8b7f8b49256c46e0b775d259293a29ae16614592ab02800662; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:58:01.482Z.