ERA09CA134 · Piper PA-32R-300
Piper PA-32R-300 · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) on approach
From Charlotte-Monroe Executive Airport (EQY) to Dare County Regional Airport (MQI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09CA134
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-32R-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
- N7918C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Charlotte-Monroe Executive Airport (EQY), Monroe, NCTo Dare County Regional Airport (MQI), Manteo, NC
- 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 · circling (IFR)
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a global-positioning-system approach at his destination airport, the pilot was unable to see the runway at the missed approach point until he had just retracted the landing gear to go-around and circle to land. He lined up with the runway too low and struck trees. The airplane came to rest on the porch roof of a residence. Postaccident examination of the airplane by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed that the wings, fuselage, and empennage had sustained substantial damage. No preimpact mechanical malfunctions were discovered. The airport elevation was 14 feet mean sea level (msl). The required ceiling for a straight in approach was 440 feet msl. The required ceiling for a circling approach was 600 feet msl. The ceiling at the time of the accident was 300 feet above ground level.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to follow the missed approach procedure while landing with a low ceiling.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09CA134
- Event ID
- 20090114X90006
- Case number
- ERA09CA134
- 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: 97f2ab77a90a0fc3ff094f1f1c75df6d183a54eb9842e8d368db71d9bdd186cc; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:41:29.061Z.