ATL04LA150 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: in flight collision with object during initial climb
From 84A · Cumming, GA to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL04LA150
- 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
- N56776
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 84A · Cumming, GATo not recorded
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Airport facilities, runway/landing area condition › Short runway/landing area
- Pilot in command › Miscellaneous, intentional
- Pilot in command › Performance data, not obtained
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he and his son needed to leave and could not wait. According to a witness, the airplane took off on runway 03, attempted to climb and collided with a tree inside an unoccupied subdivision off the departure end of runway 03. According to the airport manager, the 1,551 foot long runway was closed for resurfacing. He said that only about two thirds of the runway (1,033 feet) had been resurfaced and that heavy equipment occupied the last one third of the runway. A review of the Cherokee 140 owner's handbook found that at gross weight under standard conditions at sea level the take off distance over a 50-ft Obstacle (Flaps Up) is 1,700 feet. Additionally, the airport manager stated that prior to the airplane's departure the pilot was advised that runway 03 was closed until later in the day when the resurfacing was to be completed.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to obtain takeoff performance data, and his intentional takeoff from a closed and short runway which resulted in an in-flight collision with a tree.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL04LA150
- Event ID
- 20040728X01083
- Case number
- ATL04LA150
- 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: 055eb2c6e54d39ee114aecf477fad9da39835b5e2a7ac4a06799d2e7613c30e5; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:15:32.758Z.