CEN12FA101 · Piper PA-28-235D
B & H Construction Piper PA-28-235D · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Guymon Municipal Airport (GUY) to David Jay Perry Airport (K1K4)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12FA101
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-28-235D
- 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
- N999RR
- Operator
- B & H Construction
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Guymon Municipal Airport (GUY), Guymon, OKTo David Jay Perry Airport (K1K4), Goldsby, OK
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument-rated private pilot obtained an outlook weather briefing and was told that instrument meteorological conditions prevailed along his route of flight, with ceilings below 1,000 feet and visibilities less than 3 miles in mist and fog. Weather at the time of departure was 600 feet overcast and 10 miles visibility. Weather at the time of the accident was 900 feet overcast and 7 miles visibility. Residents heard an engine at high power, followed by the ground shaking and the sound of impact. The airplane impacted the ground between two buildings in a near-vertical attitude. The buildings and an overhead power line were not struck. The engine and propeller were buried in the crater. All cables were on their respective pulleys and all cable breaks bore overload signatures. Based on the high speed impact at which the airplane struck the ground and the instrument conditions that existed in the vicinity, it is likely that the pilot became disoriented and lost control of the airplane. A postaccident examination of the airplane did not reveal any anomalies consistent with a preimpact failure or malfunction.
Probable cause
The non-instrument-rated pilot's decision to continue flight into instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in the pilot’s spatial disorientation and loss of control of the airplane. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s lack of instrument certification.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12FA101
- Event ID
- 20111210X03017
- Case number
- CEN12FA101
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2011-12-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1aa8c6cad7891f469c27c7accb6451d53ef2152747d685c97689d14d9925adcf; retrieved 2026-09-13T22:03:45.889Z.