NYC08FA148 · Piper PA 28-161
Florida Flight Training Center Piper PA 28-161 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Venice Municipal Airport (VNC) to Venice Municipal Airport (VNC)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08FA148
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA 28-161
- 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
- N465TC
- Operator
- Florida Flight Training Center
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Venice Municipal Airport (VNC), Venice, FLTo Venice Municipal Airport (VNC), Venice, FL
- 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
- Initial climb
- Defining eventThe 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
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
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 departed the coastal airport on a dark night, and turned over open water, in a left traffic pattern for runway 31. During the initial climb, on a mid-field downwind leg for the runway, the airplane departed controlled flight and impacted the water. Examination of the wreckage did not reveal any preimpact mechanical malfunctions. The vacuum pump vanes were intact; however, the entire vacuum system could not be tested due to impact damage. During a previous flight, another pilot noted an error with the accident airplane's directional gyro (DG). Specifically, the DG moved approximately 10 degrees off for every 5 or 10 minutes of time that elapsed. The unit was replaced and the other pilot noted a DG error on a subsequent flight; however, it was not as bad as the previous flight. The National Transportation Safety Board received no other reports of the DG error. The accident pilot had approximately 4,000 hours of total flight experience and 2 hours of total flight time in 90 days prior to the accident flight.
Probable cause
The pilot's inflight loss of control for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08FA148
- Event ID
- 20080403X00419
- Case number
- NYC08FA148
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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 2008-03-25.
- API snapshot SHA-256: af0de72eb8c46530dcdfd46ce80c3741dcf13c37e2b08a709c11466056fa3f3c; retrieved 2026-09-13T19:00:47.081Z.