ATL05CA146 · Piper 22
Piper 22 · Accident: forced landing during takeoff
From 72A · Archdale, NC to Archdale, NC
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL05CA146
- 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
- 0
- 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 22
- Aircraft type
- Piper 22
- 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
- N8595C
- Operator
- Keith Harris
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 72A · Archdale, NCTo Archdale, 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
- Forced landing
- 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
- Pilot in command › Ground loop/swerve, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During an aborted takeoff, the airplane ground looped and nosed over 200 feet from the departure end of runway 03. The pilot stated that "after he rotated the airplane off of the ground at 55 knots, the airplane felt like it did not want to climb." He did not believe that he would be able to climb over trees at the departure end of the runway, so he decided to abort the takeoff with about 400 feet of runway left. During the aborted takeoff, the pilot landed the airplane back on the runway, ground looped the airplane, and the airplane came to rest 200 feet from the end of the runway. Post-accident examination of the airplane revealed that the airplane was inverted, nose gear bent aft, and engine firewall was buckled. The airplane also exhibited damage to the right wing, fuselage, propeller, and engine cowling. Post-accident examination of the flight control surfaces revealed no mechanical failures. The pilot did not report any mechanical malfunction with the airplane. Runway 03 at Johnson Field is a 2070 feet long by 75 feet wide. Performance data for the Piper 22 states that a normal takeoff ground roll is 950 feet and take takeoff to clear a 50 foot obstacle takes 1500 feet.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during landing roll, which resulted in a nose over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL05CA146
- Event ID
- 20050914X01451
- Case number
- ATL05CA146
- 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: 7cf94b9371200f5753b7f59e495440311548523082052967e55567ea2ea16f58; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:29:14.119Z.