CHI03LA038 · Piper PA28-181
Piper PA28-181 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during takeoff
From Greensburg Municipal Airport (I34) to Logansport Cass County Airport (GGP)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI03LA038
- 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 PA28-181
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N793MA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Greensburg Municipal Airport (I34), Greensburg, INTo Logansport Cass County Airport (GGP), Logansport, IN
- 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- 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
- Loss of control on ground/water
- 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 › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was substantially damaged when it departed the runway surface while attempting to takeoff. It came to rest in a plowed field adjacent to the airport. In his statement, the pilot reported: "As I started to lift off, suddenly the plane skid" and started to go toward the side of the runway. He went on to note that to avoid a collision, " I turned the plane to the west and tried to reduce speed, but the plane was out of control... ." The airport manager, who witnessed the accident aircraft attempting to takeoff, stated: "It was snowing fairly heavy, with a couple of inches of slush on the runway". He reported that it was almost a "white out" condition, and estimated visibility as approximately 1/4 mile. The pilot stated that there were no abnormalities with the controls, and no malfunctions with the aircraft. A post-accident examination also revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
Failure of the pilot to maintain directional control during the takeoff roll. Contributing factors included inadequate planning/decision by the pilot for attempting to depart from the slush covered runway, the slush covered runway itself, and the falling snow.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI03LA038
- Event ID
- 20021217X05615
- Case number
- CHI03LA038
- 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: c0eebf92745ecbb7a836e9e1ecadda328664c5d01170c940551f32b7e8f0bbd6; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:34:05.307Z.