ERA10LA066 · Piper PA-28-140
Malone Aviation Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) en route
From Saratoga County Airport (5B2) to Malone Dufort Airport (MAL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA066
- 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
- 2 · 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-28-140
- 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
- N1723T
- Operator
- Malone Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Saratoga County Airport (5B2), Saratoga Sprngs, NYTo Malone Dufort Airport (MAL), Malone, NY
- 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
- En route · descent
- 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)
- 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 › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and passenger were returning home on a night cross-country flight. The flight did not arrive and a search for the airplane ensued. The wreckage was found about 47 nautical miles from the destination airport, on the south side of a 4,600-foot mountain, about 600 feet below its peak. The initial impact area was a rock ledge, and a majority of the cabin and fuselage was consumed by postcrash fire. Examination of the wreckage revealed no evidence of preexisting mechanical anomalies and propeller signatures were indicative of engine power at impact. A portable global positioning system unit was found at the accident site; the data for the flight revealed that the airplane was in a shallow descent and on an approximate heading to the destination airport at the time of the accident. Although the exact weather conditions at the accident site were not determined, low clouds and fog were reported in the vicinity at the time of the accident. The accident occurred about 10 minutes after the end of civil twilight and there was no discernable moonlight at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain clearance from mountainous terrain during descent at night, with low clouds and fog.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA066
- Event ID
- 20091117X60147
- Case number
- ERA10LA066
- 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, coordinates. 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: 65ab76c56b254694c718c66695d15a8cef017735467d38a8fd55bad279c55346; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:34:13.748Z.