ERA11FA094 · Piper PA-28-151
Piper PA-28-151 · Accident during initial climb
From Spencer Airport (60M) to Fitchburg Municipal Airport (FIT)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11FA094
- 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
- 1 · 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
- N30ZZ
- Operator
- Eddy Howard A
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Spencer Airport (60M), Spencer, MATo Fitchburg Municipal Airport (FIT), Fitchburg, MA
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to departure, the pilot allowed minimal time for the engine to warm up (0.1 hour elapsed for the accident flight, as indicated by the hour meter). While there were no eyewitnesses who saw the departure or accident, one individual located east-northeast of the departure end of the runway heard a loud sound that she attributed to a northerly departure and then heard a sound that she associated with a backfire. Another individual reported hearing a surging or sputtering sound from the engine, followed by silence. About 850 feet from the approach end of the runway opposite the takeoff runway, the left wing collided with a tree. The airplane then descended, rolled inverted and impacted the ground.
Both wing fuel tanks were breached during the accident and the amount of fuel on board the airplane at the time of the accident could not be determined. The right tank was selected to supply fuel to the engine, and first responders reported that fuel was leaking from that (breached) tank at the accident site. Examination of the flight controls, engine, engine systems, and fuel supply system revealed no evidence of preimpact failure or malfunction.
The flight previous to the accident flight occurred 7 weeks prior. At the end of that flight, the fuel quantity gauges indicated both fuel tanks were about 1/4 full. However, given the elapsed time for the accident flight, it is unlikely that the engine experienced fuel exhaustion.
Probable cause
The in-flight collision with a tree while returning to land for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11FA094
- Event ID
- 20101222X04851
- Case number
- ERA11FA094
- 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: af69823d441938d5910b4c70e95e8f6d9de9c28b73d1c1d0359766f1555b3271; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:11:20.968Z.