CEN10LA052 · Piper PA-34-200T
Piper PA-34-200T · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) during initial climb
From Hicks Air Field (T67) to Arlington Municipal Airport (GKY)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10LA052
- 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-34-200T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-34
- 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
- N8297P
- Operator
- Glen R. Smith, Jr · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hicks Air Field (T67), Fort Worth, TXTo Arlington Municipal Airport (GKY), Arlington, TX
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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 systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that he took off and did not engage the autopilot, but did use the electric trim switch on the control yoke to establish a climb attitude after takeoff. When he activated the trim switch, the airplane "pitched down rapidly." Despite his application of full up elevator to arrest the descent, the airplane continued to descend. The pilot was forced to make a landing in an open field. During the ensuing forced landing, the airplane sustained substantial damage to both wings and fuselage. The pitch trim drum inner shaft was found to be in the full-nose-down position. Examination of the cockpit revealed all circuit breakers were closed and the master switch had been secured. The flight computer, trim servo, directional gyro, flight command indicator, pictorial navigation indicator, and control yoke were functionally tested and no defects were noted. The original control yoke trim switch had been replaced. The switch wiring was not the original wiring and did not correspond to the original color codes on the wires. The wire colors were written on pieces of masking tape which were wrapped around each corresponding wire. One of the wires was pinched and pressing on the switch wafer stack; according to a representative of the manufacturer the pinched wire pressing on the switch wafer stack could have resulted in a runaway trim condition.
Probable cause
The pilot's inability to maintain control of the airplane due to a pinched trim system wire that resulted in a runaway nose-down pitch trim.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10LA052
- Event ID
- 20091117X33933
- Case number
- CEN10LA052
- 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: 09c01fd46a95edc2a6110b872ee8702865dc9754d3cc06af2b6a419d4c6dbd0b; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:29:55.036Z.