ERA09CA207 · Piper PA28-151
Phill-Air Piper PA28-151 · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Delaware Airpark (33N) to Delaware Airpark (33N)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09CA207
- 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 PA28-151
- 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
- N41568
- Operator
- Phill-Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Delaware Airpark (33N), Dover, DETo Delaware Airpark (33N), Dover, DE
- 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
- Landing
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot conducted one landing on runway 27, but he "did not like it" because it was "gusty," so he opted to conduct a second landing. The pilot stated that as the airplane was "nearing touchdown," it unexpectedly began a turn to the left. The airplane first touched down approximately 75 feet left of the edge of the runway. It continued on a southerly arc away from the runway, passed through an aircraft tie-down area, and struck two parked airplanes. The accident airplane's right wing separated from the fuselage at the wing root, and the airplane came to rest approximately 346 feet from the centerline of the runway. Runway 27 was 3,582 feet long and 60 feet wide, with a displaced threshold of 350 feet. The only wind information available at the accident airport was a wind sock. About the time of the accident, winds at an airport 9 miles southeast of the airport were reported to be from 330 degrees at 12 knots, with gusts to 18 knots. Calculations revealed that if these winds were present at the accident airport, they would have resulted in crosswind components from 11.7 to 17.5 knots. A required cockpit placard in the airplane stated that the "demonstrated crosswind component" was 17 knots. The pilot reported that he obtained his weather information from commercial television and radio stations. He did not report experiencing any mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane during the accident landing.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09CA207
- Event ID
- 20090323X12622
- Case number
- ERA09CA207
- 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: 1b9d3bf0d9656b63b91b74fa3db83ed340a2faad6a829bea2dbf9dcb4baa1a59; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:51:48.014Z.