ERA12LA112 · Piper PA-38-112
Piper PA-38-112 · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during an emergency descent
From Plymouth Municipal Airport (PMZ) to Merry Hill, NC
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12LA112
- 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
- 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
- N9279T
- Operator
- Taylor Michael B
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Plymouth Municipal Airport (PMZ), Plymouth, NCTo Merry Hill, NC
- 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
- Emergency descent
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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 › Experience/knowledge
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was maneuvering at a treetop level toward an open field when the engine stopped producing power. The airplane then descended at a steep angle over the approach end of the field and collided with terrain, nosed over, and came to rest inverted. Examination of the wreckage revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical anomaly. The left fuel tank was selected on the fuel selector, and no fuel was found in the left tank. There was no odor of fuel, and no fuel staining present around the tank. The right fuel tank was also empty, but there was some fuel blighting of the vegetation beneath the right fuel cap. The pilot/owner did not hold a pilot certificate.
Probable cause
Operation of the airplane by a non-certificated pilot. Contributing to the accident was the non-certificated pilot’s failure to maintain airspeed while making a forced landing following a total loss of engine power at low altitude, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall. Also contributing was the pilot’s improper fuel management, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12LA112
- Event ID
- 20111219X03444
- Case number
- ERA12LA112
- 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: 819d80e74dac3418eac04b3bfba1555567ac7878f2cab8554643c688b8cc6121; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:00:48.343Z.