ERA14LA433 · Piper J3C 65
Piper J3C 65 · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC during an emergency descent
From Raleigh County Memorial Airport (BKW) to Smith Reynolds Airport (INT)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA433
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper J3C 65
- Aircraft type
- Piper J3
- 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
- N26105
- Operator
- Heimos Bernard F
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Raleigh County Memorial Airport (BKW), Beckley, WVTo Smith Reynolds Airport (INT), WINSTON SALEM, NC
- 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
- Emergency descent
- 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
- VFR encounter with IMC
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was conducting a multi-leg, cross-country flight in an airplane that was not equipped to fly in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC). Visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the departure airport; however, IMC existed along the route of flight. Although the pilot was instrument-rated, he had not completed an instrument proficiency check in 9 years.
The pilot reported that, about 1 hour 30 minutes into the flight, the airplane encountered deteriorating weather conditions and that he then attempted an emergency landing on an interstate highway; the airplane subsequently impacted trees and terrain. The pilot could not recall if he checked the weather conditions before departure. He further reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or anomalies with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. The recorded weather at an airport located about 1 mile from the accident site included visibility less than 1/4 statute mile about the time of the accident. An airmen's meteorological information (AIRMET) for mountain obscuration due to clouds and mist was in effect at the time of the accident for the area around the accident site.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain clearance from trees during an emergency landing after encountering deteriorating weather conditions. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s poor preflight weather planning, which resulted in an inadvertent encounter with instrument meteorological conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA433
- Event ID
- 20140910X03205
- Case number
- ERA14LA433
- 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: 2efa02b0f2bc988c8d277ab04f4f31c46a044b98cae37d92cba2c7770812201d; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:44:25.714Z.