ERA15CA116 · Piper PA-28R-200
Skyline Solutions Piper PA-28R-200 · Accident: windshear or thunderstorm during landing
From New Smyrna Beach Municipal Airport (EVB) to Deland Municipal Sidney H Taylor Field (DED)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15CA116
- 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 PA-28R-200
- 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
- N5033S
- Operator
- Skyline Solutions
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From New Smyrna Beach Municipal Airport (EVB), New Smyrna, FLTo Deland Municipal Sidney H Taylor Field (DED), Deland, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 45 years (built 1970)
- 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
- 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
- Windshear or thunderstorm
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he had decided to return to his originating airport after having been advised by air traffic control of an inbound thunderstorm during a local flight. The pilot obtained an instrument flight rules clearance and headed towards the airport, which was in the direction of the storm. During the first landing attempt on runway 30, the pilot noted strong wind gusts and "extreme precipitation," but elected to continue the landing. About 30 feet above the runway, a "strong windshear" forced the airplane onto the runway, which resulted in substantial damage to the left wing. The airplane subsequently lifted off the ground again and the pilot initiated a go-around. The pilot circled the runway and aborted three more attempts before he successfully landed the airplane. He reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that could have precluded normal operation. The pilot stated that he had obtained some weather information prior to his departure, but was not aware of the thunderstorm. A review of weather radar revealed the presence of strong winds and heavy precipitation over the pilot's originating airport at the time of the accident. Winds reported at the accident site about 10 minutes after the accident were from 320 degrees at 16 knots, gusting to 27 knots. There were also area forecasts for convective activity and Convective Sigmets that had been issued for the pilot's route of flight about one hour and thirty minutes prior to his departure.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight weather planning and decision to land in an area with known convective wind gusts, which resulted in a loss of control and subsequent hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15CA116
- Event ID
- 20150203X92358
- Case number
- ERA15CA116
- 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: 0acdf44b03628ff57ed80a224ec044fe2a68a69e73c83f4b915c9bd4d072d5eb; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:04:00.920Z.