CEN09WA138 · Piper PA-42-720
Piper PA-42-720 · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) en route
From Frankfurt/Main to Bad Nauheim
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09WA138
- 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
- Unknown · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-42-720
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-42
- 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
- DIDIA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Frankfurt/MainTo Bad Nauheim
- 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
- Non-U.S., Non-Commercial
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On January 19, 2009, at 1140 coordinated universal time (1240 central European Time), a Piper Aircraft Corporation PA-42-720, German registered D-IDIA, owned by HELI Flight Flugschule Flugbetrieb GmbH, was destroyed when it impacted terrain under unknown circumstances near Konigstein, Hessen, Germany. Instrument meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident. The pilot was fatally injured. The flight originated from Frankfurt/Main, Germany, and was en route to Bad Nauheim, Germany.
The German investigators reported that the airplane was destroyed when it flew "into terrain in bad weather."
The accident investigation is under the jurisdiction and control of the German government. This report is for informational purposes only and contains only information released by or obtained from the German government or German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation. Further information pertaining to this accident may be obtained from:
German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Investigation Bundesstelle fuer Flugunfalluntersuchung (BFU) Hermann-Blenk Strasse 16 38108 Braunschweig Germany
Probable cause
This is under the jurisdiction and control of the German Government.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09WA138
- Event ID
- 20090121X45440
- Case number
- CEN09WA138
- 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.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0d99179a7816c3bbe69ac142607442e4d7e762540c491e6ad912a50617c08e32; retrieved 2026-09-13T19:55:33.375Z.