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CEN14CA488 · Piper PA 28-140

8 Sept 2014 · Belen, NM, United States

Piper PA 28-140 · Accident: abrupt maneuver during landing

From E80 · Belen, NM to E80 · Belen, NM

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Event

NTSB case
CEN14CA488
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
N6693W
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From E80 · Belen, NMTo E80 · Belen, NM
Aircraft age
About 49 years (built 1965)
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 · aborted after 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
Abrupt maneuver
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 › Action/decision

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

On the student pilot's second solo landing the airplane landed hard and bounced twice. The flight instructor, standing on the side of the runway, radioed instructions to "go-around". The student pilot then applied full power, applied right rudder and retracted one notch of flaps. The flight instructor observed the airplane was then in a steep nose up stalling pitch attitude. He radioed instructions to "pitch down, pitch down", and with the airplane very low to the ground and drifting left, the student pilot radioed back asking the flight instructor to "say again". Control was lost and the airplane impacted a hangar about 650 feet to the left of runway center line. The impact resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage, empennage, tail surfaces, and both wings which were completely separated as the airplane penetrated the hangar wall. The fuselage came to rest inside the closed hangar and there was no postimpact fire. The student pilot reported that had attempted the go-around with too much pitch, too little speed, and not enough rudder input. He also reported that the accident would not have happened if he had spent more of his attention "flying the plane" and less attention communicating on the radio during a critical phase of flight. Additionally, the student pilot reported there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.

Probable cause

The student pilot's improper recovery from a bounced landing.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record CEN14CA488
Event ID
20140908X52707
Case number
CEN14CA488
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: ec42e4af326f589c9499eca89e5f7c751e78701f8780d5c406b02e2bf2a2d3be; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:43:59.486Z.