Travelaire Service Piper PA-31T accident
Piper PA-31T · Accident: part(s) separation from aircraft during initial climb
From Cheyenne Regional Jerry Olson Field (CYS) to Sheridan County Airport (SHR)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR12LA030
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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-31T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-31
- 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
- N39EH
- Operator
- Travelaire Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cheyenne Regional Jerry Olson Field (CYS), Cheyenne, WYTo Sheridan County Airport (SHR), Sheridan, WY
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Part(s) separation from aircraft
- 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 structures
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was climbing through 7,500 feet when the main cabin door opened in-flight and subsequently separated from the airframe. The main cabin door was later recovered and examined. The examination revealed deformation on the outer skin on the lower end of the door; the skin deformation was consistent with the door rotating downward and aft relative to the hinge attachment. The fracture surfaces were on slant planes consistent with ductile overstress fracture. No evidence of preexisting cracks was observed. The door latching mechanism was examined and all pushrods, latch pins, and the associated bellcrank were in place and intact. Wear was observed on the upper side of the forward pins at the middle and upper positions; however, the latching mechanism travel and extension of the latch pins was correct. No other anomalies were noted; thus it is likely the door latch mechanism was not fully engaged before takeoff, which resulted in the door opening in-flight.
Probable cause
The flight crew’s failure to properly latch the cabin door before takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR12LA030
- Event ID
- 20111109X90044
- Case number
- WPR12LA030
- 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: 17d76bc0859fdd5cbf7dfd5b7081b4009db848313f7ade1b881cec18619cabb1; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:55:37.187Z.