WPR11FA383 · Piper PA-38-112
JJ Aviation Piper PA-38-112 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Bert Mooney Airport (BTM) to Bert Mooney Airport (BTM)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11FA383
- 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
- 2 · 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-38-112
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-38
- 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
- N2584N
- Operator
- JJ Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bert Mooney Airport (BTM), Butte, MTTo Bert Mooney Airport (BTM), Butte, MT
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The operator stated that the flight instructor indicated that the purpose of the instructional flight was to have the student conduct a series of touch-and-go landings before proceeding to the training area where he intended on having the student practice steep turns, turns around a point, and holding a level altitude. A witness located near the accident site reported seeing the airplane flying in a clockwise horizontal circle with the wings almost vertical, while slowly losing altitude. The airplane appeared to be attempting to straighten out and climb when it then went straight down in a nosedive. A second witness observed the airplane spinning to the right before descending. The witness reported that before losing sight of the airplane, it appeared to be pulling up. Wreckage and impact signatures were consistent with a right wing low and nose low impact. Postaccident examination of the airframe, flight control system, and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. From the witness observations, it is likely that the airplane entered a spin and the pilot was not able to regain control. It could not be determined who was at the flight controls at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airplane control while maneuvering.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11FA383
- Event ID
- 20110815X62149
- Case number
- WPR11FA383
- 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: 074f26f4c5b509b1cba677abacbfac203a971aac87ebb135151dec49596beb92; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:43:04.020Z.