CEN09LA441 · Piper PA-28 160
Piper PA-28 160 · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) on approach
From Warren County Airport/John Lane Field (I68) to Cincinnati Municipal Airport Lunken Field (LUK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09LA441
- 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 PA-28 160
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N5519W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Warren County Airport/John Lane Field (I68), Lebanon, OHTo Cincinnati Municipal Airport Lunken Field (LUK), Cincinnati, OH
- 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 · VFR pattern base
- 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)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he intended to “simply enjoy several hours” of night flying and to return to the departure airport. During the flight he noticed that the aircraft compass and directional gyro indications did not match. He was not familiar with the new GPS in the airplane and he was not able to get navigational information from it. The pilot became disoriented and did not recognize any familiar landmarks. It had become very dark. He saw a rotating airport beacon so he decided to land at that airport. As he was turning from downwind to base, the airplane hit the trees paralleling the runway. Witnesses reported that they heard the airplane approaching and saw the airplane in level flight for about 3–5 seconds at tree-top level, and then the airplane impacted the trees. Postaccident inspection of the airplane revealed no preimpact anomalies.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of situational awareness during the approach to an unfamiliar airport at night and his failure to maintain clearance from the trees. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's lack of familiarity with the airplane's navigational equipment.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09LA441
- Event ID
- 20090715X83104
- Case number
- CEN09LA441
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2009-07-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4706dfd26c0abdfd819e6fc17d36e14f837d90627002a6f5ae51c69028f6540b; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:52:51.366Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. The city field holds the airport name; LUK is Cincinnati Municipal Airport Lunken Field, serving Cincinnati, OH.