ERA11CA365 · Piper PA-32-300
Three Wing Flying Services Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) on approach
From Igor I Sikorsky Memorial Airport (KBDR) to Igor I Sikorsky Memorial Airport (KBDR)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11CA365
- 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-32-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N600DK
- Operator
- Three Wing Flying Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Igor I Sikorsky Memorial Airport (KBDR), Bridgeport, CTTo Igor I Sikorsky Memorial Airport (KBDR), Bridgeport, CT
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The purpose of the flight was for the pilot to regain night currency, which had lapsed two weeks prior. The pilot stated that he intended to fly three landing pattern approaches and perform three full stop landings. According to the pilot, the take off, and initial climbout to a left downwind were normal. The pilot reported that there was a slight haze in the vicinity of the airport. While turning to the base leg of the approach, the pilot trimmed the airplane for 90 mph and lowered the flaps to the "first notch." The pilot reported the he saw "two white lights" on the vertical approach slope indicator, which indicated that he was above the glideslope, so he adjusted the trim to maintain 80 mph and lowered the flaps to the "third notch." The airplane's left wing impacted a 12-foot-tall blast fence, which was located 20 feet from the end of the runway, resulting in the separation of the left wing from the fuselage. After the accident, the pilot stated that the blast fence was indistinguishable from the runway threshold markings. The blast fence was properly marked with red and white checker markings on the interior side and was not required to be lit by Federal Aviation Administration facility requirements. The pilot was familiar with the airport.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from a blast fence on final approach to land.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11CA365
- Event ID
- 20110627X74140
- Case number
- ERA11CA365
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2011-06-26.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e029f84debbfc4f78118e797740bfdcde46fece839e03ba83d197684e8e029e4; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:21:44.638Z.