CEN09LA597 · Piper PA-12
Piper PA-12 · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC while maneuvering
From Montgomery-Wehrman Airport (4MO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09LA597
- 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
- 1 · 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 PA-12
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-12
- 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
- N3234M
- Operator
- Jared Hobaugh
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montgomery-Wehrman Airport (4MO), Montgomery City, MOTo not recorded
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- VFR encounter with IMC
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Due to adverse weather conditions, the pilot landed at a grass airstrip en route to his destination. The airport manager stated that a front was approaching the airport and that it rained all night. According to the airport manager, the pilot returned to the airport the next morning, started the airplane, and taxied to the fuel pump. The right fuel cap was missing. He drained the fuel sump repeatedly because he found water in the right tank. The airport manager gave the pilot a fuel cap for the right tank so that he could depart. Witnesses reported seeing the airplane flying 50–60 feet above the ground with the engine sputtering and cutting in and out prior to the accident. Airplane impact damage was consistent with a steep nose-down attitude with about 80 degrees of left roll. Witnesses reported heavy cloud cover and limited visibility due to light-to-moderate fog. Observed weather near the accident site was 1/4 mile visibility in fog with an indefinite ceiling at 100 feet. The Weather Depiction Chart depicted an area of instrument-flight-rule (IFR) conditions along and behind the cold front. The accident site was located in an area of IFR conditions, with the departure and planned destination airports under visual flight rules (VFR) conditions. The pilot was not instrument rated, and the airplane was not equipped for IFR flight. The inspection of the engine and airframe revealed no preimpact anomalies. The propeller blades were bent aft from impact forces.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued visual flight into instrument meteorological conditions, which included low ceilings and fog, and his failure to maintain control of the airplane. Contributing to the accident was the partial loss of engine power as a result of water contamination of the fuel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09LA597
- Event ID
- 20090922X24416
- Case number
- CEN09LA597
- 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: 7ad0b5b0549fa316b96b580504a2bb0b545878211739c1f7f4aec05270427462; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:29:02.429Z.