IAD05LA050 · Piper PA-31P-350
Piper PA-31P-350 · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Town of East Hampton Airport (HTO) to Danbury Municipal Airport (DXR)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD05LA050
- 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-31P-350
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-31
- 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
- N134DE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Town of East Hampton Airport (HTO), East Hampton, NYTo Danbury Municipal Airport (DXR), Danbury, CT
- 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 · IFR final approach
- 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
- Pilot in command › IFR procedure, not complied with
- Pilot in command › Minimum descent altitude, 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
Prior to departing on the accident flight, a mechanic, who was to perform work on the airplane advised the owner/pilot that the weather was below landing minimums and he should not attempt the trip. During a localizer approach at the airport, the airplane impacted trees that were located west of the approach end of the runway. After executing a missed approach the pilot advised ATC that he had bird strikes on both wings and that it looked like the de-icing boots were damaged. A local resident who witnessed the event stated that "the scraping sound of branches against metal was audible, and I saw the upper branches of the pine trees waving after contact with the plane." The trees were located at a terrain elevation of 599 feet above sea level. The minimum descent altitude for the approach was published as 1,100 feet.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper IFR procedure by flying below the minimum descent altitude, which resulted in the airplane striking trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD05LA050
- Event ID
- 20050511X00589
- Case number
- IAD05LA050
- 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: 871c8c7a65a1887b498770c9166529d16d78e0262cf782f64d00ab7048406aea; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:07:33.523Z.