NYC08CA141 · Piper PA-25-260
Hiott's Flight Service Piper PA-25-260 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From North Perry Airport (HWO) to Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport (OPF)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08CA141
- 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 PA-25-260
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-25
- 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
- N169AB
- Operator
- Hiott's Flight Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Perry Airport (HWO), Hollywood, FLTo Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport (OPF), Opa Locka, 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After a banner pickup, the pilot of the PA-25-260 felt the "left rudder pedal become stiff" after the banner came off of the ground. The pilot looked back at the tail of the airplane and verified that the "hook rope" had caught the towrope and not the tail wheel of the airplane. After circling to the right in the banner pattern, the pilot decided to release the banner in order to "free up the rudder." He flew over the drop zone but was unable to line the airplane up so he activated the banner release handle over a grassy area that was free from obstructions or people, but the release was not successful. The pilot still had minimal rudder control and the airplane wanted to turn to the right. He then decided to land the airplane. After lining up with another grassy area he retarded the throttle and "stalled" the airplane into a "three point landing." The airplane then touched down, veered to the right, and impacted a berm substantially damaging the airplane. Post accident examination by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed that the hook rope was wrapped around the rudder horn.
Probable cause
The entanglement of the hook rope with the rudder horn during banner pickup.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08CA141
- Event ID
- 20080418X00516
- Case number
- NYC08CA141
- 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: 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: b47873e6d6396e000daac1c5759b78c09c9af8d7f7559e6524a5a6edd51d036b; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:33:41.477Z.