WPR11FA182 · Piper PA-28RT 201
Piper PA-28RT 201 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Banning Municipal Airport (BNG) to Redlands Municipal Airport (REI)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11FA182
- 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-28RT 201
- 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
- N355LC
- Operator
- Andy Testman
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Banning Municipal Airport (BNG), Banning, CATo Redlands Municipal Airport (REI), Redlands, 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 power plant
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses near the accident site reported hearing the airplane and that it seemed to be flying at low level; the engine sounded like it was operating normally. Neither witness could see the airplane because of low clouds, which were touching the tops of the ridgelines in the hilly terrain. Visibility was about 1 mile or less in fog or heavy mist. Radar data displayed a single target in the vicinity of the accident site, which was likely the accident airplane. The target made multiple tight right and left turns, and the altitude varied between 3,900 feet and 2,500 feet mean sea level. The target subsequently began a tight right descending turn until the target dropped off radar in the vicinity of the accident site. The accident site was in the foothills of mountainous terrain and located on a ridgeline. A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. It is likely that the pilot entered the clouds and while maneuvering failed to maintain sufficient altitude to clear the mountainous terrain.
Probable cause
The pilot’s continued flight in an area of low ceiling and visibility, which resulted in a collision with mountainous/hilly terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11FA182
- Event ID
- 20110403X33148
- Case number
- WPR11FA182
- 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: 75185a6a1e3626be3fdecbd7794de15334beb001514f57698cbc539da5b5c8db; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:19:16.612Z.