ERA10LA267 · Piper PA-46-350P
Piper PA-46-350P · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) during initial climb
From Clearwater Air Park (CLW) to Toussaint Louverture International Airport (MTPP)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA267
- 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-46-350P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-46
- 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
- XBLTH
- Operator
- Ernesto Gonzalez
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Clearwater Air Park (CLW), Clearwater, FLTo Toussaint Louverture International Airport (MTPP), Port-au-Prince
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Collision with terrain/object (non-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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was loaded more than 500 pounds (about 12 percent) over the certificated maximum gross weight. The airplane lifted off from the 3,500-foot-long runway about one-half to two-thirds down the length of the runway. The pilot retracted the airplane's landing gear and flaps before reaching the airplane manufacturer's recommended retraction speeds. The airplane was unable to gain sufficient altitude and subsequently impacted trees and a house located beyond the departure end of the runway. A postaccident examination of the wreckage and recorded non-volatile memory revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical abnormalities.
Probable cause
The overweight condition of the airplane due to the pilot's inadequate preflight planning, resulting in the airplane's degraded climb performance. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's retraction of the flaps prior to reaching the manufacturer's recommended flap retraction speed.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA267
- Event ID
- 20100516X61819
- Case number
- ERA10LA267
- 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: ec83ed868a8616632a6ecdb2a4fbca65a17316638729f63af53121fde6579ac7; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:06:12.345Z.