ERA13CA316 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: loss of lift during takeoff
From Blairstown Airport (1N7) to Wings Field (LOM)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13CA316
- 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-28-140
- 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
- N1441T
- Operator
- Craig Levine
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Blairstown Airport (1N7), Blairstown, NJTo Wings Field (LOM), Blue Bell, 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
- Takeoff
- 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 lift
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was departing an airport near a ridge. Everything was normal on takeoff; however, during climbout shortly after departure, the airplane descended as if it was in a strong downdraft and he could not maintain altitude. The passenger, who was a glider pilot, stated that he estimated the airplane was approximately 200 feet above the ground when the pilot reported that they were losing altitude. Witnesses at the airport stated that during takeoff roll, the airplane rotated nose-up about one-third to one-half down the 3,088-foot long runway. The airplane remained in that attitude down the entire runway, about 20 feet above the ground. The airplane pitched up further, just cleared trees off the departure end of the runway, then appeared to stall and descend behind the treeline. The airplane subsequently impacted the front yard of a residence off the departure end of the runway and came to rest upright. Examination of the airplane by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed that during the impact, all three landing gear separated. Additionally, the firewall and lower fuselage were substantially damaged. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions with the airplane and the inspector did not observe any. The recorded wind at an airport approximately 10 miles from the accident site, about 25 minutes after the accident, was variable at 5 knots. The recorded temperature at that time was 84 degrees F.
Probable cause
The flight's encounter with a downdraft from a ridge shortly after takeoff resulting in a loss of lift and collision with terrain during an uncontrolled descent.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13CA316
- Event ID
- 20130709X65929
- Case number
- ERA13CA316
- 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: 29ec6cc3befa75a5a35b5c9b110160083f552a3e4d7c13a4f923b666b46ca289; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:10:25.957Z.