ERA12FA163 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin on approach
From Frederick Municipal Airport (FDK) to York Airport (THV)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12FA163
- 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-28-180
- 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
- N1352T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From Frederick Municipal Airport (FDK), Fredrick, MDTo York Airport (THV), Thomasville, PA
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was conducting a cross-country flight and landed at his destination airport, on runway 17 without incident. He taxied back to the beginning of the runway, took off, and entered a left traffic pattern for another approach to the same runway. The airplane was on final approach when it stalled and descended toward the ground. The airplane's left wing initially impacted the ground, followed by the nose. The airplane came to rest in a corn field about 1/4-mile from the approach end, and about 400 feet to the left of the extended runway centerline. Examination of the accident airplane’s global positioning system data revealed that the flight track data for the accident flight was similar to the flight track during the previous landing; however, the ground speeds during the final approach phase of the accident flight were significantly slower than during the previous landing. The airplane’s last recorded ground speed was 45 knots. According to the airplane’s performance charts, its stall speed for the landing configuration would have been 53 knots. Postaccident examination of the wreckage did not reveal any preimpact mechanical malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation. The wind reported at the airport about the time accident was from 230 degrees at 13 knots, gusting to 20 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed during an approach in gusty crosswind conditions, which resulted in an inadvertent aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12FA163
- Event ID
- 20120129X34027
- Case number
- ERA12FA163
- 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: fef5b88cf79dffe2dd417263dca5f4831886211ed3896f680d78dc108d04ab3b; retrieved 2026-09-13T22:09:08.509Z.