WPR11LA044 · Piper PA30
Piper PA30 · Accident: medical event during landing
From Stellar Airpark (P19) to Tucson International Airport (TUS)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11LA044
- 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 PA30
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA30
- 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
- N628R
- Operator
- Phillip Secker Jr
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stellar Airpark (P19), Chandler, AZTo Tucson International Airport (TUS), Tucson, AZ
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- Medical event
- 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 › Physical
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he had a headache before the flight, that his thinking had been impaired all day, and that he was having trouble with his left-side motor skills. He flew a cross-country flight in order to accomplish a check ride, but during the oral examination his headache persisted so he canceled the remainder of the oral exam and the scheduled check ride. The pilot flew to his home base, and after landing he could not slow the airplane before reaching his intended taxiway, so he continued to the next taxiway. The airplane did not stop or turn when crossing the second taxiway and continued forward until it struck a light post with the right wing tip tank. Fuel began escaping as the airplane continued forward into a building's plate glass window. The pilot estimated that his speed at the point of contact was 5 mph, and he stated that he did not hit his head. Several hours after the accident, the pilot's wife noticed that he was shuffling his left foot, and he was still feeling the severe headache that he had at the start of the day. He went to a hospital that night for examination where medical personnel discovered a subdural hematoma and performed immediate surgery to remove blood from his brain. It is likely that the pilot was neurologically impaired during the flight and thus unable to manipulate the rudder control and brakes to maneuver during taxi to avoid the collision with the building.
Probable cause
The pilot's impairment by an undiagnosed medical condition, which resulted in a loss of directional control and subsequent collision with a building during the landing roll. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's decision to fly when he was not feeling well.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11LA044
- Event ID
- 20101110X95242
- Case number
- WPR11LA044
- 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: bc9e329f9c029d8e14508a6b7a7b0c6dd0934418790c9e1f382e288afffd36c4; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:33:26.228Z.