CEN09FA393 · Piper PA-32R-300
Propaire Piper PA-32R-300 · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing during initial climb
From 3MO · Lakeview, AR to Spirit of St Louis Airport (SUS)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09FA393
- 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
- 3 · 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-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
- N38171
- Operator
- Propaire
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 3MO · Lakeview, ARTo Spirit of St Louis Airport (SUS), St. Louis, MO
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
An employee who helped load the airplane thought it was “overloaded” and that the passengers seemed “tense" and “in a hurry to leave.” The pilot made a flaps-up takeoff. It was calculated that at takeoff, the airplane was 188 pounds over maximum certificated gross weight, and the aft c.g. limit was exceeded by 0.15 inches. It was calculated that the flaps up takeoff ground roll would be approximately 1,970 feet, and the flaps up takeoff distance over a 50-foot barrier would be approximately 3,190 feet. The grass runway was 3,200 feet long. Prior to takeoff, the pilot told a surviving passenger that they were going to need all of the runway for takeoff. The passenger said the airplane lifted off at the end of the runway, dropped down into a shallow valley, touched the ground, and lifted off again. It touched down a second time, hit a barbed wire fence and tree, and “rolled” several times. Witnesses said the airplane lifted off in a nose high attitude, disappeared into a shallow valley, then reappeared in a slight climb. The wings were "wig-wagging" and the airplane was "porpoising." GPS data indicates the airplane lifted off between 74 and 78 mph and climbed no more than 29 feet. A videotape of the takeoff corroborated witness' observations. Post-accident examination of the airplane and engine did not reveal any evidence of preimpact failure or malfunction.
Probable cause
The pilot's poor judgment/decision making in attempting the no-flap takeoff, his failure to comply with weight and balance limitations, and his failure to calculate the airplane's performance under exiting conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09FA393
- Event ID
- 20090629X01338
- Case number
- CEN09FA393
- 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: 4d4c759c936129d4d1166d747f4ae6d2ede14355cb5c359dbb757575d6aecda0; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:19:16.439Z.