CEN09CA616 · Piper PA-36-285
Piper PA-36-285 · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) while maneuvering
From Clark County Airport (8D7) to Clark, SD
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09CA616
- 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-36-285
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-36
- 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
- N57625
- Operator
- Douglas M. Hansen · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Clark County Airport (8D7), Clark, SDTo Clark, SD
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aerial application pilot reported that he was setting navigational equipment while en route to a field to spray. He stated that he became fixated on the unit. He said, “at the end of the field was a levy with a road on top of it. I noticed this too late and impacted the landing gear of the aircraft at the top of the levy. The airplane continued to fly and I knew I had hit something.” Review of photographs of the airplane showed that structural tubing was torn away from the fuselage tubing and the torn structure remained attached to the separated landing gear.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate visual lookout and failure to maintain clearance from a levy.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09CA616
- Event ID
- 20100322X72642
- Case number
- CEN09CA616
- 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: 96c4d6b4b16501b1ac27d390bbfce6d51aa914a2077fc8e065eaea4375244cc1; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:46:34.190Z.