NYC03FA113 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From North Central West Virginia Airport (CKB) to CYKZ · Buttonville
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC03FA113
- 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
- 1 · 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-28-180
- 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
- N55995
- Operator
- Kenneth G. McLeod · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Central West Virginia Airport (CKB), Clarksburg, WVTo CYKZ · Buttonville
- 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 · cruise
- 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 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument rated pilot departed on a VFR cross country flight after he received a weather briefing which included ceilings between 1,300 feet, and 1,500 feet, and mountain obscurement. The airplane struck the top guy wire, mid-span between the top of the tower and its ground anchor. As the airplane fell to the ground, it struck a 12,000 volt power line. A post crash fire resulted. The accident site was located 18 nm east of a straight line course between his last departure point, and his first navigational fix. The airplane was equipped the VOR receivers, and the pilot had a GPS with him. The method of navigation used was not determined. Power company personnel who responded to the power outage, reported that the top of the mountain was obscured by fog. The pilot possessed a valid Canadian pilot certificate, but not a current Canadian medical certificate. He did not possess an FAA airman medical certificate or pilot certificate.
Probable cause
The pilot's intentional decision to continue visual flight into instrument meteorological conditions, and his failure to maintain obstacle clearance which resulted in the airplane striking a guy wire on the communications antenna. A factor was the fog.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC03FA113
- Event ID
- 20030602X00752
- Case number
- NYC03FA113
- 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: bccd9c4fd0dc1dd534ada781cac936d16d90cb3e5944b93cbcc5d890b5880fe9; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:14:28.934Z.