WPR14FA382 · Piper PA 28R-180 28R-30501
Piper PA 28R-180 28R-30501 · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) during initial climb
From Shively Field (KSAA) to Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (KBJC)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14FA382
- 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
- 2 · 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 28R-180 28R-30501
- 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
- N4618J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Shively Field (KSAA), Saratoga, WYTo Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (KBJC), Denver, CO
- Aircraft age
- About 46 years (built 1968)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was conducting a personal cross-country flight. The airplane took off on a moonless night from an uncontrolled rural airport that resides in rolling prairie grass and has a sparse population. The airplane wreckage was found by a local rancher the morning after the accident. The airplane had collided with terrain that was about 100 ft above the airport elevation, 1.3 miles southeast from the center of the runway. The initial point of impact was a shallow 7-ft-long ground scar that contained green/blue lens fragments from the right wing tip. The ground scar was oriented in a direct line with the main wreckage on a magnetic bearing of 240 degrees.
Based on the direction of the ground scar, it is likely that the airplane took off from runway 23 and drifted south without establishing a positive climb rate and then impacted the slightly elevated terrain southeast of the airport. Additionally, the environment southeast of the airport lacked ground features and lighted buildings or roads, which, on a moonless night, would produce very dark conditions with no ground references or natural horizon. The private pilot had no significant instrument or night flying experience.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain a positive climb rate after takeoff in dark, night conditions, which resulted in his controlled flight into terrain due to the lack of ground references or natural horizon.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14FA382
- Event ID
- 20140921X40740
- Case number
- WPR14FA382
- 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 2014-09-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b3380a22b27ba10fbb9737a61f326c185813b45400a7b458811b87d1834e236d; retrieved 2026-09-14T17:26:30.277Z.