CEN14CA160 · Piper PA 28-235
Piper PA 28-235 · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From Mack Mesa Airport (10CO) to Mack Mesa Airport (10CO)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14CA160
- 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 28-235
- 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
- N9172W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mack Mesa Airport (10CO), Mack, COTo Mack Mesa Airport (10CO), Mack, CO
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1966)
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot had been maneuvering at low altitude below the rim of a canyon in a remote mountainous area and reported that he had done this aerial survey operation in this same canyon several times before. During climb-out from the canyon the airplane failed to achieve enough climb performance to clear the ridge and the airplane impacted terrain at about 8,500 feet mean sea level. The impact resulted in substantial damage to the airplane including the complete separation of the left wing and partial separation of the right wing. The airplane came to rest upright and there was a significant fuel spill, but no postimpact fire. The pilot reported no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot also reported that in the future he should maintain a higher altitude for flight over the canyon.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane while maneuvering at low altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14CA160
- Event ID
- 20140317X45728
- Case number
- CEN14CA160
- 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: 774c0980f0df8f549b5a8ee873c31fcfac903561a7ef5b4a1d95ad987a571c05; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:24:07.483Z.