ERA09CA518 · Piper PA46 350P
Piper PA46 350P · Accident: runway excursion during landing
From Henry County Airport (PHT) to DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09CA518
- 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 PA46 350P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA46
- 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
- N664RS
- Operator
- Richard T. Smith · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Henry County Airport (PHT), Paris, TNTo DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK), Chamblee, GA
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- Runway excursion
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After having trouble maintaining altitude and aligning the airplane with the localizer, the pilot conducted a visual approach for Runway 20L. The aircraft touched down and continued off the end of the runway, striking localizer equipment and substantially damaging the left wing. No mechanical malfunctions were reported by the pilot or identified postaccident. The recorded winds on the field were calm approximately 15 minutes prior to the accident. The pilot reported that he had been ill for several days prior to the accident, and postaccident medical testing revealed that he was dehydrated due to the illness. Additionally, the pilot reported that he did not eat anything on the day of the accident. The pilot was airborne for approximately 8 hours, including fuel stops and periods of maneuvering due to weather. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the pilot held a third-class medical certificate with a limitation for his diabetic condition.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control during landing. Contributing to the accident was pilot fatigue.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09CA518
- Event ID
- 20090914X85644
- Case number
- ERA09CA518
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2009-09-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0117e7c645f75a6efee052cd939940c3f2368220aaf5eb7639263b801b6a6dbe; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:18:16.368Z.