CEN11LA581 · Piper PA-25-235
Piper PA-25-235 · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From Sturgis Municipal Airport (49B) to Belle Fourche Municipal Airport (EFC)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11LA581
- 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-25-235
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-25
- 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
- N7051Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sturgis Municipal Airport (49B), Sturgis, SDTo Belle Fourche Municipal Airport (EFC), Belle Fourche, SD
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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 · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane owner stated that the pilot was applying insecticide to an alfalfa field about 12 miles north of the departure airport. The pilot had completed three application flights without incident prior to the accident flight. A witness located about 2 miles south of the field reported that she observed the accident airplane and everything seemed to be normal. She subsequently observed the airplane depart the area in the general direction of the accident site. The airplane impacted a hill along the east side of a valley. The impact point was located about 14 feet below the crest of the hill, which led up to a plateau. The land owner located the wreckage about 40 minutes after the witness observed the airplane departing the area. A postaccident examination did not reveal any anomalies consistent with a preimpact failure or malfunction.
Probable cause
The pilot's collision with terrain for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11LA581
- Event ID
- 20110820X52713
- Case number
- CEN11LA581
- 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: d8a81993df9b1fbe54fef223f5d75016b0958c9759478034095fc6b35d8aad97; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:44:33.203Z.