DFW07CA147 · Piper PA28R-200
Piper PA28R-200 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From F83 · Abernathy, TX to Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport (LBB)
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW07CA147
- 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 PA28R-200
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N41585
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From F83 · Abernathy, TXTo Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport (LBB), Lubbock, TX
- 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/mush
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Relinquishing of control, delayed
- Pilot in command › Stall/mush, encountered
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 failed to maintain airspeed on short final resulting in a stall and a hard landing. The 253-hour private pilot and the 700-hour certificated flight instructor (CFI) were performing a power-off 180-degree approach to land when they overshot the runway while turning to final. Once realigned with the extended centerline of the runway, the flight instructor observed that the airspeed was indicating 70-75 knots while the single-engine airplane descended through an altitude of 200-feet above ground level (AGL). As the flight continued to descend to approximately 30-feet AGL, the private pilot "applied excessive back pressure" and established a pronounced nose-high attitude. The flight instructor attempted to push the nose of the airplane down; however, he was unable to overpower the student. The flight instructor reported that the pilot "did not immediately relinquish the controls when requested by the CFI." Once the flight instructor regained the airplane's controls, he added power to counteract the descent; however, the airplane stalled approximately 15-feet AGL and landed hard on the runway. An examination of the airplane revealed structural damage to both wings. No pre-impact anomalies with the airplane's controls were reported.
Probable cause
The inadvertent stall and subsequent hard landing as result of the pilot's failure to maintain airspeed and his delayed relinquishing of the airplane's controls when requested by the flight instructor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW07CA147
- Event ID
- 20070731X01065
- Case number
- DFW07CA147
- 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: f2f6a3311229d58757505770e7434e00602d305adf409b41822ded4c1013dfb6; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:42:25.613Z.