WPR09FA150 · Piper PA28-236
Piper PA28-236 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Brackett Field (KPOC) to Mojave Air & Space Port (KMHV)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09FA150
- 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
- 2 · 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 PA28-236
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N129AB
- Operator
- Charles W Shaffer · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brackett Field (KPOC), La Verne, CATo Mojave Air & Space Port (KMHV), Mojave, CA
- 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
- En route · climb to 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane departed the airport on an instrument-flight-rules clearance. The weather at the airport was 500-foot overcast, with a visibility of 1 mile. The overcast layer was solid up through 3,100 feet mean sea level (msl). The departure instructions were to climb on heading 150 to 1,400 feet msl, then initiate a climbing turn to heading 130, intersect the VOR 164 radial outbound until 9 miles south of the airport, and climb to 4,000 feet. Just after takeoff, at approximately 1,400 feet, the airplane made a climbing turn to 146 degrees and continued to climb on that course for about 1.5 minutes. At 2,500 feet, the airplane started a right-hand turn. The deviation of the airplane’s course prompted the terminal radar approach controller (TRACON) to ask if the pilot had canceled his clearance. The pilot responded in a steady even tone, “Negative, nine alpha bravo still climbing.” Five seconds later the airplane was no longer in radar contact. The radar track depicted the airplane in a climbing right-hand turn in a tightening spiral directly over the accident location. The aircraft wreckage was located on a hillside about 2 miles south of the departure airport and in the vicinity of the last radar return. A review of the pilot’s flight records revealed that he held an instrument rating issued in August 2006, and had logged just two instrument approaches since January 2007, neither within the last 90 days. Additionally, he had accumulated 0.8 hours of simulated instrument time and 0.8 hours of actual instrument time since January 2007. There is no record of the pilot obtaining an instrument proficiency check within the 12 months prior to the accident. The tone of the pilot’s response to TRACON’s radio query implied that he was not aware that the airplane had deviated from the departure clearance and was in a steadily tightening right-hand turn. This lack of awareness could be attributed to spatial disorientation or a distraction away from the primary flight instruments.
Probable cause
The pilot's spatial disorientation while flying in instrument meteorological conditions that resulted in a loss of control of the airplane. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's lack of recent instrument flying experience.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09FA150
- Event ID
- 20090315X21847
- Case number
- WPR09FA150
- 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: 068f2700d3e89a0d00d59119bedb38de0fdfe4d42211bbe75e080448924d2af7; retrieved 2026-09-13T19:59:49.755Z.