ERA13LA113 · Piper PA-34-200T
Piper PA-34-200T · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) on approach
From Raleigh Executive Jetport (TTA) to Dare County Regional Airport (MQI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13LA113
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-34-200T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-34
- 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
- N6537C
- Operator
- Greg Carlisle
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Raleigh Executive Jetport (TTA), Sanford, NCTo Dare County Regional Airport (MQI), Manteo, 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
- Approach
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The weather at the destination airport had reduced visibility and low drifting fog. According to the passenger, the flight was normal; the pilot acknowledged the reduced visibility report at the destination airport that was relayed by a pilot that landed ahead of the accident airplane. During the instrument approach, when the airplane descended through clouds, the pilot realized that the airplane was too far down the runway to safely land. The pilot then elected to enter a visual low traffic pattern rather than execute a missed approach procedure. However, the passenger stated that the barometric pressure was not reset during the approach. Thus, although the altimeters indicated that the airplane was at 410 ft mean sea level (msl) on the downwind leg, it was actually flying about 260 ft msl in the airport pattern before impacting water. Examination of the airplane wreckage revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have prevented normal operation. Although a prohibited medical drug was found the in the blood and urine of the pilot, the amounts found were not enough to be impairing. The pilot had a total flight experience of about 387 hours of which about 17 hours were in actual instrument meteorological conditions. The restricted visibility conditions at the time of the accident would have been conducive to the development of spatial disorientation.
Probable cause
The pilot's attempted visual flight in instrument meteorological conditions while maneuvering at a low altitude in the traffic pattern, which resulted in spatial disorientation and impact with the water. Contributing was the pilot's lack of experience flying in actual instrument meteorological conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13LA113
- Event ID
- 20130114X21545
- Case number
- ERA13LA113
- 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, coordinates. 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: d835333aa1f7b2593084d5002807b94192c6372a7127a5d4839fdc859fb0230a; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:52:01.136Z.