WPR13FA058 · Piper PA-28-160
Piper PA-28-160 · Accident
From Tucson International Airport (TUS) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR13FA058
- 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-28-160
- 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
- N5076W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tucson International Airport (TUS), Tucson, AZTo not recorded
- 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
- Other
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
Without clearance or communication with air traffic control, the pilot took off in the airplane from a taxiway and departed the airport area westbound. Five days later, the airplane wreckage was found 160 miles west of the departure airport. Postaccident examination of the wreckage determined that the airplane impacted the ground in a near vertical attitude. Further examination of the airplane and engine revealed no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
The pilot had been treated in the past for depression, a seizure disorder, an opiate addiction, and she used lamotrigine to treat migraine headaches. Toxicology results detected a sedating antihistamine, diphenhydramine, lamotrigine, and tetrahydrocannabinol in the pilot, however, their effects on her performance at the time of the accident could not be determined.
The pilot's husband reported that his wife had been displaying abnormal behavior about 3 to 4 weeks before the accident. In a phone conversation with her husband the night before the accident, the pilot expressed concern about men in black helicopters watching her, and, in a message left on his voicemail the day of the accident, her husband stated that she seemed to be "acting paranoid," stating she was going to take the airplane flying to get away from "them."
The source of the pilot's psychosis could not be determined during the investigation. The pilot's acute psychosis with paranoid thoughts likely impaired her decision-making and judgment and contributed to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain airplane control. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s impairment due to acute psychosis with paranoid thoughts.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR13FA058
- Event ID
- 20121128X43813
- Case number
- WPR13FA058
- 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 UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0fd9e5aacc281df2412cc23e1be6cf9a73b39f5970b826897cd3607971f466dc; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:49:28.957Z.