WPR10CA451 · Piper PA-28-235
Piper PA-28-235 · Accident: ground collision while taxiing
From Paradise Lakes Airport (7CA2) to Van Nuys Airport (VNY)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10CA451
- 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-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
- N32025
- Operator
- Joseph R Biafora, Jr · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Paradise Lakes Airport (7CA2), Paradise Lakes Estates, CATo Van Nuys Airport (VNY), Van Nuys, 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
- Taxi · to runway
- 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
- Ground collision
- 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 handling/service
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was taxiing to the run up area when the right wing collided with a chain link fence. The right wing tip tank caught fire, and the airplane turned to the right, coming to a stop with the nose into the fence. The right wing sustained crush damage and fire damage. About a year before this accident, the airport’s water well had become inoperative, and a new well was installed with the chain link fence around it, closer to the taxiway. A Federal Aviation Administration inspector reported that the fence line (on the right side) to taxiway centerline is 19 feet. The tree line (on the left side) to taxiway centerline is 25 feet. The airplane's total wingspan is 33 feet.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from a fence during taxi.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10CA451
- Event ID
- 20100908X65049
- Case number
- WPR10CA451
- 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: 3d504e10648c6df49546b037e87170dcb9239e535bdd6a3ae254d1ed96bbfdd6; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:08:06.178Z.