CHI04LA034 · Piper PA-32-300
Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Crystal Airport (MIC) to Richard I Bong Memorial Airport (SUW)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04LA034
- 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-32-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N28693
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Crystal Airport (MIC), Minneapolis, MNTo Richard I Bong Memorial Airport (SUW), Superior, WI
- 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
- 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 collided with a ditch following a loss of directional control while landing. The pilot reported the airplane touched down at an airspeed of 80 to 85 knots. He reported that after a brief landing roll, he tapped the brakes and the airplane pulled to the left toward the grass. The pilot reported he pulled back on the control yoke and applied light brakes as the airplane continued toward the grass. Upon seeing a drainage ditch that was perpendicular to the runway, the pilot applied power and pulled back in an attempt to clear the ditch. The airplane contacted the ditch at which time the landing gear collapsed. Inspection of the airplane's brakes following the accident failed to reveal any mechanical failure/malfunction. Skid marks on the runway matched the track of the right main and nose gears. No tracks from the left main gear were visible until a point where the airplane had traveled into the grass. The pilot made the following recommendation as to how the accident could have been avoided. "Reduce landing touchdown speed, and after landing allow aircraft to runout and burn off speed naturally before applying brakes."
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control of the airplane during the landing roll. Factors associated with the accident were the ditch that the airplane contacted.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04LA034
- Event ID
- 20031201X01965
- Case number
- CHI04LA034
- 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: ab358920485335d3724ef0cfff47860c2a374d18ad2b5d0fb531a7a650abcfbb; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:09:21.560Z.