ERA11FA422 · Piper PA-28-180
N1279T Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC en route
From Griffiss International Airport (RME) to South Albany Airport (4B0)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11FA422
- 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-28-180
- 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
- N1279T
- Operator
- N1279T
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Griffiss International Airport (RME), Rome, NYTo South Albany Airport (4B0), Albany, NY
- 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
- En route
- 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
- VFR encounter with IMC
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed without filing a flight plan or obtaining a weather briefing. Witnesses near the accident site described hearing an airplane “low to the ground” as it approached them. They said it was in a left-wing-low attitude just prior to striking trees and disappearing from view. One witness said that the engine was “really loud” and that the airplane appeared just above the trees and just beneath the clouds that were “right on top of the trees." The airplane struck trees and rising terrain traveling opposite the intended direction of flight. The pilot of a police helicopter dispatched to the scene immediately after the accident reported that he chose to abort the mission about 1/4 mile before reaching the crash site due to weather conditions. He stated that he was unable to access a position directly over the scene due to rising terrain and low clouds. Postaccident examination of the wreckage revealed no pre-impact mechanical anomalies.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued visual flight into instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in a collision with trees and rising terrain while attempting to reverse course. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's failure to obtain a preflight weather briefing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11FA422
- Event ID
- 20110725X05350
- Case number
- ERA11FA422
- 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: 334a2435c6e4d58e1e4953393642324ab2dff8114869303334b6ca9786de8128; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:37:52.815Z.