ERA11CA040 · Piper PA-28-151
Piper PA-28-151 · Accident: landing area undershoot
From Pickens County Airport (LQK) to Kecks Airport (N88)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11CA040
- 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-28-151
- 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
- N44078
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pickens County Airport (LQK), Liberty, SCTo Kecks Airport (N88), Julian, NC
- 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
- Landing
- 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
- Landing area undershoot
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he departed on the personal flight for the purpose of having an annual inspection performed on his airplane at the destination airport. While approaching the airport, he observed the windsock indicating the wind was from the south, and chose the appropriate runway. The pilot planned his approach to clear the fence at the end of the runway and still have enough distance for the roll out on the grass runway. Knowing that the terrain sloped upward from the fence to the runway threshold, he aimed to touchdown on the crest of the hill. As the airplane approached the runway, the pilot added power to compensate for a fast rate of decent, then reduced power when he felt he had was aligned appropriately. The airplane touched down about half way up the slope and the nose gear collapsed; the airplane came to rest at the top of the slope. According to the Federal Aviation Administration inspector, the firewall was substantially damaged. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to attain the proper touchdown point.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11CA040
- Event ID
- 20101029X90146
- Case number
- ERA11CA040
- 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: 20ce07e85d5964c02a1a895e8f71d58e6dc3028320beba6ac364b52b3f02f314; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:31:31.898Z.