ERA12CA464 · Piper PA32-301FT
Piper PA32-301FT · Accident: runway excursion during landing
From Lynchburg Regional Airport - Preston Glenn Field (KLYH) to Transylvania Community Airport (3NR3)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12CA464
- 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 PA32-301FT
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA32
- 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
- N813TC
- Operator
- Garrett John C
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lynchburg Regional Airport - Preston Glenn Field (KLYH), Lynchburg, VATo Transylvania Community Airport (3NR3), Brevard, 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Runway excursion
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on final approach to land, the pilot noticed a tree that was located near the end of the runway. To avoid the tree, he “stayed high” until he cleared the approach end of the runway and then attempted to “drop quickly” to the field. The airplane touched down on the left main landing gear roughly 2,000 feet beyond the threshold of the 2,900-foot-long runway, and the pilot applied the brakes. The pilot was unable to stop the airplane before it overran the runway. The right main landing gear struck an airport sign, and the airplane came to rest in brambles 100 feet beyond the departure end of the runway. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the airplane’s firewall was substantially damaged. During the examination, no evidence of any preexisting mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation was discovered. During a postaccident interview, the pilot stated that, after the accident, he discovered that the tree he had attempted to avoid was actually located to the right of the runway.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to execute a go-around following an approach that was high and fast, which resulted in a runway overrun.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12CA464
- Event ID
- 20120718X82121
- Case number
- ERA12CA464
- 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: ba55106b5b122f35698e9abd13c8f168f2e0748ac4b24083724944bd0939cd4b; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:58:04.807Z.