Northeast Aviation Piper PA-23-250 accident
Piper PA-23-250 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during takeoff
From State College Regional Airport (UNV) to Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC06CA043
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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-23-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-23
- 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
- N62497
- Operator
- Northeast Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From State College Regional Airport (UNV), State College, PATo Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE), Philadelphia, PA
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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 · roll/run
- 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 pilot taxied to the snow-covered runway for takeoff, and following a run-up check of the engines, taxied onto the runway and began the takeoff roll. The airplane accelerated "normally" down the runway, and when it reached about 80 knots airspeed, it veered to the left. The airplane subsequently departed the runway and impacted a snow bank, resulting in substantial damage. The pilot did not report any mechanical malfunctions with the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during the takeoff run. A factor was the snow-covered runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC06CA043
- Event ID
- 20060113X00063
- Case number
- NYC06CA043
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2005-12-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 68846cebfbf6e3f7546d139b2e8d0c7c0ce5431b68cbe247a73e03ea5b505853; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:56:46.040Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N62497; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, NAHA.