CEN15LA077 · NEW Piper Aircraft Inc PA 32R-301T
Integrity Home Care NEW Piper Aircraft Inc PA 32R-301T · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From Lee's Summit Municipal Airport (LXT) to Downtown Airport (3DW)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA077
- 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
NEW Piper Aircraft Inc PA 32R-301T
- Aircraft type
- New Piper PA-32
- 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
- N3127R
- Operator
- Integrity Home Care
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lee's Summit Municipal Airport (LXT), Lee's Summit, MOTo Downtown Airport (3DW), Springfield, MO
- Aircraft age
- About 9 years (built 2005)
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- 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 propeller/rotor
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After descending through a cloud layer on an instrument approach in night conditions, the private pilot reached visual meteorological conditions, cancelled his instrument flight plan, and advised air traffic control that he was proceeding directly to the destination airport. The airplane was about 2 miles from the airport and flying at an altitude about 275 ft above airport elevation when it struck and damaged the top of a 367 ft-tall cellular tower. The airplane experienced a total loss of engine power and impacted trees and terrain in a residential area. Postaccident examination of the wreckage revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Federal Aviation Administration guidance states that, while over a congested area, except when necessary for take-off or landing, the pilot of an airplane should maintain an altitude of 1,000 ft above the highest obstacle within a horizontal radius of 2,000 ft of the aircraft. Guidance also indicates that pilots should maintain an altitude of about 1,000 ft above airport elevation until entering the downwind leg of the traffic pattern.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to descend below the recommended altitude during approach for landing in night visual meteorological conditions, and his failure to see and avoid a lighted tower, which resulted in collision with the tower and a subsequent total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA077
- Event ID
- 20141215X02302
- Case number
- CEN15LA077
- 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: bc63d1523281debb73641250a2f5121e1bf2141cb974b91cd7936ee293cd2b4b; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:58:52.640Z.