WPR09CA054 · Piper PA-28-161
Oxford Airline Training Center Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: loss of control on ground during takeoff
From Phoenix Goodyear Airport (GYR) to Phoenix Goodyear Airport (GYR)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09CA054
- 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-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
- N268ML
- Operator
- Oxford Airline Training Center
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix Goodyear Airport (GYR), Goodyear, AZTo Phoenix Goodyear Airport (GYR), Goodyear, AZ
- 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
- 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 on ground
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot had been performing touch-and-go takeoffs and landings. On the accident landing, the pilot reported touching down left of centerline. He corrected back to runway centerline and reconfigured the airplane for takeoff. As he applied full power the airplane pulled to the left. He corrected back to runway centerline, did not see any abnormalities, and decided that he had enough remaining runway to safely take off. He applied full power and the airplane pulled to the left again. The right wing dropped and the airplane traveled to the left of the runway. The pilot reduced power to idle and applied right rudder. As the airplane was departing the runway surface, he applied the brakes. The pilot stated that there was no noticeable response from the airplane and braced himself as the airplane struck a taxiway sign and spun across the dirt between the runway and taxiway. A Federal Aviation Administration inspector examined the airplane and reported that there were no preimpact mechanical anomalies that would have caused a loss of aircraft control.
Probable cause
The failure of the student pilot to maintain directional control during takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09CA054
- Event ID
- 20081208X70402
- Case number
- WPR09CA054
- 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. 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: 8d84363f6c199bb6a31531c836d547945c805da35f03449a385d78e9ed96c74a; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:35:41.455Z.