CEN14FA467 · Piper PA 46 350P
Real Estate School Piper PA 46 350P · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin on approach
From Centennial Airport (APA) to Erie Municipal Airport (EIK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14FA467
- 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
- 5 · 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 46 350P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-46
- 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
- N228LL
- Operator
- Real Estate School
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Centennial Airport (APA), Denver, COTo Erie Municipal Airport (EIK), Erie, CO
- Aircraft age
- About 20 years (built 1994)
- 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 · VFR go-around
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was inbound to the airport, attempting to conduct a straight-in approach to runway 33. Due to the prevailing wind, traffic flow at the time of the pilot's arrival was on runway 15. Another airplane was departing the airport in the opposite direction and crossed in close proximity to the accident airplane. The departing traffic altered his course to the right to avoid the accident airplane while the accident airplane stayed on his final approach course. The two aircraft were in radio communication on the airport common traffic advisory frequency and were exercising see-and-avoid rules as required.
Witnesses reported that as the airplane continued down runway 33 for landing, they heard the power increase and observed the airplane make a left-hand turn to depart the runway in an attempted go-around. The airplane entered a left bank with a nose-high attitude, failed to gain altitude, and subsequently stalled and impacted terrain. It is likely the pilot did not maintain the necessary airspeed during the attempted go-around and exceeded the airplane's critical angle of attack. The investigation did not reveal why the pilot chose to conduct the approach with opposing traffic or why he attempted a landing with a tailwind, but this likely increased the pilot's workload during a critical phase of flight.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed and exceedance of the critical angle of attack during a go-around with a tailwind condition, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall. A contributing factor to the accident was the pilot's decision to continue the approach with opposing traffic.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14FA467
- Event ID
- 20140831X12212
- Case number
- CEN14FA467
- 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: 9a5dd33c6fde77940738668de53e58898305ebc7a95d7367744f47b53cb09b5e; retrieved 2026-09-14T17:25:00.107Z.