DFW06LA159 · Piper J3C-65
Piper J3C-65 · Accident: overrun during takeoff
From Stugartt, AR (no airport) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW06LA159
- 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 J3C-65
- Aircraft type
- Piper J3
- 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
- N3542N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stugartt, AR (no airport)To 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
- 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
- Overrun
- 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 › Clearance, 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 256-hour private pilot and a passenger were departing a private 1,200-foot-long grass airstrip in a two-seat, single-engine airplane when it collided with 10-to14- foot-tall brush. It then flew across a 14-foot-wide drainage ditch located beyond the departure end of the runway before it landed in an open field and nosed over. Examination of the vintage airplane by a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspector revealed that the throttle was in the "idle" position and both propeller blades were bent aft. The outside air temperature at the time of the accident was 90 degrees Fahrenheit and both occupants weighed in excess of 200 pounds. The aircraft manufacturer did not publish takeoff performance data for this airplane, which was manufactured in 1947. The investigator in charge calculated the density altitude near the time of the accident at 2,296 feet.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from high brush during takeoff. Contributing factors were the short runway and the high density altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW06LA159
- Event ID
- 20060830X01260
- Case number
- DFW06LA159
- 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: 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 2006-06-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 72c871d9b0d4b29b4706316cf104576549bf8c958a93383c54c6f7ce577a3ad1; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:57:06.485Z.