CHI07LA051 · Piper PA-32-300
Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Cherry Capital Airport (TVC) to Romeo State Airport (D98)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI07LA051
- 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-32-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N888PR
- Operator
- Michael R. D'Arcy · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cherry Capital Airport (TVC), Traverse City, MITo Romeo State Airport (D98), Romeo, MI
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Proper descent rate, 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 was flying a VOR approach in instrument conditions when the accident occurred. Data indicated that the airplane entered a left standard rate turn and descended into trees approximately 2.5 miles from the airport. Two of the passengers on board reported that there was no indication of any problem during the flight. They reported that they had just descended below the clouds and thought they were landing just prior to contacting the trees. Witnesses reported moderate to heavy rain in the area at the time of the accident. A plot of the GPS data shows the airplane traveled south of the approach course. It then turned left back toward the course. The GPS data then showed that approximately 20 seconds prior to the last recorded position, the airplane entered a 2.6 degree/sec left turn, while accelerating from 99 mph to 119 mph. The last recorded GPS position was approximately 275 yards south of the accident site. Post accident inspection of the airplane and engine failed to reveal any pre-existing failure/malfunction, which would have resulted in the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control and proper rate of descent during the VOR approach. Factors associated with the accident were the low cloud conditions and moderate to heavy rain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI07LA051
- Event ID
- 20070103X00004
- Case number
- CHI07LA051
- 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: e35baeebd43ca1a5d3844f1c7e1f9b16d30c98744274ec0b533a5caaa30bcadf; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:55:42.520Z.