NYC03LA195 · Piper PA-28-140
Somerset Air Service Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Solberg/Hunterdon Airport (N51) to Somerset Airport (SMQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC03LA195
- 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-28-140
- 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
- N6183J
- Operator
- Somerset Air Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Solberg/Hunterdon Airport (N51), Readington, NJTo Somerset Airport (SMQ), Somerville, 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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 in flight
- 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 › Go-around, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot of the accident airplane, while he was on the downwind leg of the traffic pattern, he heard a helicopter announce over the UNICOM frequency that he was "inbound...5 miles to the northeast." The pilot continued in the pattern, and when he was at an altitude of 100 feet on final approach, he obtained visual contact with the helicopter, which was descending towards the taxiway adjacent to runway 30, about 1/3 down the runway. The pilot then decided to initiate a go-around; however, the airplane had already "lost its lift," and only climbed to about 20-30 feet before it was blown "by the propwash of the helicopter" to the left of the runway. The right wing dropped, impacted the runway, and the airplane "cartwheeled," coming to rest on the grassy area between the runway and taxiway. A review of FAA Advisory Circular (AC) 90-23E, Wake Turbulence, revealed: "A hovering helicopter generates a downwash from its main rotor(s) similar to the "prop wash" of a conventional aircraft. However, in forward flight, this energy is transformed into a pair of strong, high-speed trailing vortices similar to wing-tip vortices of larger fixed-wing aircraft. Pilots should avoid helicopter vortices since helicopter forward flight airspeeds are often very low which generate exceptionally strong wake turbulence."
Probable cause
The pilot's delay in executing a go-around, which resulted in an encounter with wake turbulence from a helicopter. A factor in the accident was the wake turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC03LA195
- Event ID
- 20031031X01834
- Case number
- NYC03LA195
- 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: 2a007034ad3db4440748695262f2d19cfd2c4293218eea4d9e791d3070ec9666; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:22:38.512Z.