WPR14CA397 · Piper PA 24-250
Piper PA 24-250 · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Placerville Airport (KPVF) to Rancho Murieta Airport (RIU)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14CA397
- 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 24-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N8129P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Placerville Airport (KPVF), Placerville, CATo Rancho Murieta Airport (RIU), Rancho Murieta, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1963)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot, who held a private pilot certificate, stated that the purpose of the flight was for him to acquire hours in the airplane with a certified flight instructor (CFI) for insurance purposes. They departed from the airplane's base to a nearby airport to practice landings. After completing about two landings, the pilot configured the airplane for a short field takeoff. During the takeoff roll, he waited for the airplane to reach rotation speed and shortly thereafter they were airborne. The airplane immediately began to veer to the left and subsequently stalled. The airplane came to rest about 50 yards off the runway surface.
As a result of the impact, the airplane sustained substantial damage to the wings. The pilot stated that there were no pre impact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed during takeoff and the certified flight instructors delayed remedial action, which resulted in the stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14CA397
- Event ID
- 20140930X14635
- Case number
- WPR14CA397
- 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: bbb3305912f8d44f5cd7f5b849df746b62a376add02ab55543aa3d55ef68a4cf; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:49:08.956Z.