WPR10FA234 · Piper PA-28-235
Piper PA-28-235 · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) en route
From Auburn Municipal Airport (AUN) to San Carlos Airport (SQL)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10FA234
- 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-28-235
- 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
- N56626
- Operator
- Julia Huber
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Auburn Municipal Airport (AUN), Auburn, CATo San Carlos Airport (SQL), San Carlos, 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
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight departed in visual flight rules flight conditions and the non-instrument-rated pilot was returning to her home airport. There was no evidence the pilot obtained a weather briefing prior to departure. An analysis conducted by an NTSB meteorology specialist determined that precipitation passed through the area of the accident site near the time of the accident. A witness that heard the airplane and its subsequent collision with terrain indicated that there was low fog at the time of the accident. Radar data showed that the airplane flew in a straight-line pattern from the northeast to the southwest between its departure and destination and then turned to the southwest when approaching an area of higher terrain. Based on witness information, it is likely that the weather conditions were poor in this area and the pilot was attempting to maneuver the airplane to improved weather conditions at lower elevations on the other side of the higher terrain. Postaccident inspection of the airplane did not disclose evidence of any preimpact anomaly of the engine or airplane systems. The pilot was on a prescription antidepressant medication that would not have been expected to impair her performance. Additionally she also had ingested quinine, which may in some cases contribute to spatial disorientation, although its effect in this accident, if any, could not be determined.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued visual flight into instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in a collision with obstacles and terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10FA234
- Event ID
- 20100509X50301
- Case number
- WPR10FA234
- 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: cc20b13e44913bf3ef860d14f107748a098d302aacbd8f19a97f6364252ed027; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:47:38.332Z.