NYC06FA156 · Piper PA-28R-200
Piper PA-28R-200 · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Springfield Robertson County Airport (M91) to Mid-State Regional Airport (PSB)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC06FA156
- 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
- 1 · 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-28R-200
- 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
- N56246
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Springfield Robertson County Airport (M91), Springfield, TNTo Mid-State Regional Airport (PSB), Philipsburg, 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 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › IFR procedure, not complied with
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 was cleared for the full instrument landing system (ILS) runway 16 approach. After crossing the locator outer marker (LOM), the airplane turned outbound, executed a course reversal, and then proceeded inbound in the general direction of the LOM, but never became established during the procedure turn. The airplane passed abeam the LOM about 1/2 mile to the northeast, and then conducted one "S" turn in about a mile, crossing over the final approach course twice before radar contact was lost. The last recorded target was at an altitude of 2,700 feet, and located about 1/2 mile west of the approach end of the runway. The airplane impacted trees about 228 feet below the decision altitude of 2,325 feet, and came to rest in a wooded area on a heading of 160 degrees. Examination of the wreckage revealed the NAV 1 radio was tuned to the localizer frequency, but the automatic direction finder was not tuned to the LOM. In addition, no preimpact failures or malfunctions were identified with either the airframe or engine. The pilot had approximately 625 total hours of flight experience, of which 45 hours were under simulated instrument conditions, and 107 hours were under actual instrument conditions. At the time of the accident, the airplane had been aloft approximately 4 hours 19 minutes, had about 41 minutes of fuel remaining, and it was unlikely the pilot would have been able to reach his filed alternate airport approximately 100 nautical miles away. The pilot was advised, 1 hour before the flight, of decreasing ceilings to 400 feet with 2 miles. Interpolation of weather data revealed that the weather at the arrival airport was about 200 feet overcast with 2.5 miles of visibility in light rain.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to comply with the published instrument approach procedure, which resulted in controlled flight into trees. Factors in the accident were the low cloud ceiling, and dark night conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC06FA156
- Event ID
- 20060706X00878
- Case number
- NYC06FA156
- 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: 3b99e209c3e3a784daf1e98debe39a503b33a68cf08d192ccf83f35f2d1a1e02; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:15:22.625Z.