CHI06CA082 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Backus Municipal Airport (7Y3) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI06CA082
- 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
- N1877J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Backus Municipal Airport (7Y3), Backus, MNTo 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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 in flight
- 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
- Stall
- 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(cfi) › Airspeed, low
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Remedial action, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane sustained substantial damage during a loss of control while on short final for landing during an instructional flight. The instructor pilot reported that the airplane was on downwind and was about to turn to the base leg when he pulled the power and informed the dual student that he had an engine failure (simulated). The dual student turned toward the runway, but when the airplane had just cleared some trees and was about 50 to 60 feet above ground level (agl), the dual student released the yoke and told the instructor that it was "his airplane." The instructor pilot reported that he took control of the yoke and banked sharply toward the runway. He detected a high sink rate and "called for power but none was applied." The instructor pilot reported that the airplane stalled about 20 feet agl, and contacted the runway and a snow bank. In a written statement, the instructor pilot reported, "We should have had a more positive change of command. I was wondering when he was going to add power and apparently he thought that I was flying the plane."
Probable cause
The airplane stalled as a result of the low airspeed and the instructor pilot's failure to take remedial action.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI06CA082
- Event ID
- 20060309X00281
- Case number
- CHI06CA082
- 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: 6a5a6d21d7c0746d852a6841187fab317ee05b3e51a9edee092f35a808a67f50; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:06:00.860Z.