CEN10CA361 · Piper PA-20
Piper PA-20 · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) during takeoff
From Landers Loop Airport (AR89) to Landers Loop Airport (AR89)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10CA361
- 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-20
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-20
- 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
- N7686K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Landers Loop Airport (AR89), Dover, ARTo Landers Loop Airport (AR89), Dover, AR
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- 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
According to a written statement provided by the pilot to a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspector, the airplane hit a deer during the takeoff roll from a private grass strip. The airplane was unable to clear the trees at the end of the runway, impacted the tree tops, and came to rest on the far side of the trees. Both main landing gear were spread out and the propeller was bent. An examination of the airframe and its systems, conducted by the FAA, revealed minor damage and no mechanical anomalies. The pilot confirmed that there were no mechanical anomalies with the airplane. On June 30, 2010, the Safety Board was notified, by the passenger, that he had sustained serious injuries during the accident. The passenger also elaborated that the airplane had not impacted a deer; however, the airplane had an "extremely long" takeoff roll and had impacted the tree tops at the departure end of the runway prior to impacting the ground. The pilot did not submit the Pilot Operator Aircraft Accident/Incident Report form 6120.1/2, as requested multiple times by the Safety Board.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from the trees during takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10CA361
- Event ID
- 20100630X30344
- Case number
- CEN10CA361
- 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: 18f91e0e7dfff28a044b070ca1d62c5444df21010c141e094e5804536ae91c07; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:33:53.167Z.