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ERA12CA573 · Piper PA-28-180

21 Sept 2012 · Berlin, NJ, United States

Salisbury Airplane Associates Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing

From Salisbury Ocean City Wicomico Regional Airport (SBY) to Pine Valley Airport (19N)

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Event

NTSB case
ERA12CA573
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-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
N7290W
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Salisbury Ocean City Wicomico Regional Airport (SBY), Salisbury, MDTo Pine Valley Airport (19N), Berlin, NJ
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
Loss of control on ground
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 pilot was attempting to land at the destination airport after a cross-country flight at night. During landing, the airplane touched down, and when the pilot applied the brakes, the airplane began to skid. The airplane then departed the left side of the runway, and as the pilot attempted to regain directional control of the airplane, it veered back onto the runway off the right side. With about 75 feet of the 3,000-foot-long runway remaining, the pilot elected to turn the airplane left in an attempt to reverse its direction. Before the turn could be completed, the airplane struck the airport perimeter fence, resulting in substantial damage to both wings. The pilot reported no mechanical malfunctions or failures of the airplane that would have precluded normal operation, and a postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no anomalies with either the flight controls or the brakes.

Probable cause

The pilot’s failure to maintain directional control during landing.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record ERA12CA573
Event ID
20120922X25057
Case number
ERA12CA573
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: 7354ab8ffeb45404298ce683554a3b96ccadc4f83ac07ba281c299e7403d63e5; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:59:44.285Z.