IAD05CA018 · Piper PA 28-181
Piper PA 28-181 · Accident: overrun during takeoff
From York Airport (THV) to Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD05CA018
- 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 PA 28-181
- 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
- N720GP
- Operator
- Thomas J. Olson · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From York Airport (THV), York, PATo Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU), RALEIGH/DURHAM, NC
- 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 · rejected takeoff
- 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
- Overrun
- 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 › Weather evaluation, 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 was advised of heavy rain in the area of the departure airport, and he decided to delay the takeoff for 30 minutes. While he waited, the pilot was contacted by the departure controller and advised that there was a "hole" to the west, and was offered a clearance. The pilot accepted the clearance and taxied to runway 17 in light rain. During the takeoff roll, the wind increased, the rain fell harder, and the pilot struggled to maintain directional control. At 55 knots, about the midpoint of the 5,100-foot runway, the takeoff was aborted but the airplane overran the runway and struck a fence beyond the departure end. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical deficiencies with the airplane, and that the airplane hydroplaned on the large amounts of standing water on the runway. The weather reported at the airport included winds from 300 degrees at 17 knots gusting to 27 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate weather evaluation and his decision to depart from a rain-soaked runway with strong quartering tailwinds, which resulted in a runway overrun and collision with a fence during the aborted takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD05CA018
- Event ID
- 20041222X02023
- Case number
- IAD05CA018
- 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: 386cfa998d5f81b81a0bb32599345a4574418b360aa764e08e7e42fc923b47e7; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:29:23.474Z.