ERA14LA244 · Piper PA-28-235
Papweb Piper PA-28-235 · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Inverness Airport (INF) to Brooksville–Tampa Bay Regional Airport (BKV)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA244
- 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
- N8683W
- Operator
- Papweb
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Inverness Airport (INF), Inverness, FLTo Brooksville–Tampa Bay Regional Airport (BKV), Brooksville, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 50 years (built 1964)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Abnormal runway contact
- 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 reported that the flight departed about 2 hours after sunset and that, several minutes after departure, the airplane's lights began to dim. The pilot reduced the electrical load; however, within several minutes, the airplane lost all electrical power. The pilot chose to continue to the destination airport, which was located 21 nautical miles from the departure airport and was within sight. Upon reaching the airport, the pilot used the runway end identifier lights and the runway's visual approach slope indicator lights to guide the airplane to the runway threshold. Due to the lack of electrical power, he was unable to use the airplane's radio to activate the other available runway lighting or use the airplane's landing lights to help him further locate the runway after crossing the threshold. The pilot misjudged the airplane's height above the runway, and, during the landing flare from an estimated height of about 4 or 5 ft, the airplane impacted the runway. The airplane then veered right, departed the runway, struck an airport sign, and was substantially damaged.
A postaccident examination revealed that the alternator had failed, which likely led to the airplane's total loss of electrical power. Review of the airplane's maintenance logs found that no maintenance related to the alternator had been documented in the airplane's 50-year and 2,600-flight-hour history. A survey of airports near the airplane's route of flight showed no continuously lighted airports located within a reasonable distance of the airplane's route.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of directional control while landing at night, which resulted in a runway excursion and collision with airport signage. Contributing to the accident was the total loss of electrical power, which necessitated the pilot having to land without the aid of the airplane’s landing lights and some of the available runway lighting.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA244
- Event ID
- 20140520X95118
- Case number
- ERA14LA244
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2014-05-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9c280ff7a3b79044ae57743c6d8fa135ac87136d57a2354536be49ade001b367; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:38:29.936Z.