CEN10CA106 · Piper PA-24-260
Piper PA-24-260 · Accident: landing area undershoot
From Southeast Colorado Regional Airport (LAA) to Cherokee County Regional Airport (CKP)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10CA106
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-24-260
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N8916P
- Operator
- Wenck Kent W
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Southeast Colorado Regional Airport (LAA), Lamar, COTo Cherokee County Regional Airport (CKP), Cherokee, IA
- 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
- 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
- Landing area undershoot
- 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, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot flew an instrument approach to runway 36 and decided to circle to land on runway 18 as the winds slightly favored runway 18, and because runway 36 contained a slight downhill slope. While on final approach the pilot lowered full flaps and slowed the airplane to 80 miles per hour. The pilot intended to land as close to the end of the runway as possible because he was concerned about the lack of braking action on the snow- and ice-covered runway. The landing gear subsequently contacted a hard snowbank about 30 feet before the approach end of the runway, resulting in substantial damage to the airplane's firewall. The airplane then slid about 450 feet down the center of the runway prior to coming to rest. The pilot reported that it was difficult to judge the terrain as everything was snow covered and white. The pilot did not report having any problems with the operation of the airplane prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot misjudged his altitude while on short final approach.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10CA106
- Event ID
- 20100122X04141
- Case number
- CEN10CA106
- 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: 597788c4bc7d160e42a1ca208e6eef82cf1ee14db0ef64b2ebe865e057aadb9d; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:38:35.042Z.