WPR10FA142 · Piper PA-32R-301T
Piper PA-32R-301T · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC en route
From San Carlos Airport (SQL) to Pine Mountain Lake Airport (E45)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10FA142
- 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-32R-301T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N4175A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Carlos Airport (SQL), San Carlos, CATo Pine Mountain Lake Airport (E45), Groveland, CA
- 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
- 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 › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The instrument-rated pilot departed at night without obtaining a weather briefing or filing an instrument flight plan. Radar track data revealed no deviations of heading or altitude for the en route segment, indicative of consistent autopilot usage. For a portion of the flight, the pilot was in communication with air traffic control (ATC) and was receiving flight following. As he approached the airport he reported to ATC that the airport was not in sight and that he would return if it was covered in a fog layer. The radar data indicated that the airplane continued to overfly the runway and begin a series of rapid altitude and heading changes. Multiple witnesses reported hearing an airplane flying with high engine speeds in the vicinity of the airport subsequent to its collision with the ground.
The wreckage path, instrument indications, and damage to surrounding trees were indicative of a high-speed, 80-degree-right-bank, and 45-degree-nose-down collision with terrain. The pilot, having flown only two instrument approaches in the preceding 6 months, was not current to fly an instrument approach. He had limited experience landing at the accident airport at night and had never performed an instrument approach into the airport in actual instrument meteorological conditions (IMC). The airplane was equipped with an autopilot and instruments suitable for flight in IMC. Impact damage and postaccident fire prevented a determination of the operational status of these systems. Examination of the remaining wreckage revealed no evidence of premishap or mechanical malfunctions of the engine and airframe.
An hour prior to the accident, another pilot reported performing a missed approach at the arrival airport due to limited visibility, followed by a diversion to an alternate airport. Witnesses and en route weather reporting facilities reported low clouds, fog, and precipitation in the vicinity of the airport. The weather conditions and operation at night were conducive to the onset of pilot spatial disorientation as indicated by the airplane's multiple rapid descents, ascents, and heading changes after the airplane passed over the airport.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued flight into night instrument meteorological conditions during the landing approach, which resulted in an in-flight loss of aircraft control due to spatial disorientation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10FA142
- Event ID
- 20100220X04837
- Case number
- WPR10FA142
- 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 2010-02-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 98f10c8e6da1477f2320430eb61ec0b173ba9072a2553337395d5485cafd3a85; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:39:51.830Z.