CEN15FA305 · Piper PA 32-300
Piper PA 32-300 · Accident: simulated/training event en route
From Pearland Regional Airport (LVJ) to Pearland Regional Airport (LVJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15FA305
- 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 32-300
- Aircraft type
- 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
- N555PK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pearland Regional Airport (LVJ), Pearland, TXTo Pearland Regional Airport (LVJ), Pearland, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 36 years (built 1979)
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Simulated/training event
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Not determined › Not determined
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and student pilot were conducting a local instructional flight. Radar data showed that, after takeoff, the airplane flew on a southwesterly heading and reached about 2,300 ft. The airplane then entered a gradual descent, which continued for about 2 minutes until the airplane was at 1,900 ft. About 20 seconds later, the airplane entered a descending left turn from 1,300 ft. The last radar target was recorded at 600 ft, at which point the airplane had turned about 270° onto a northwesterly heading.
The radar data are consistent with the flight instructor retarding the throttle to simulate a power loss and the student entering a left turn in search of suitable terrain on which to make a forced landing. Evidence on scene and witness marks on the airplane were consistent with the airplane hitting a tree before impacting the ground. Control continuity was established to all the flight control surfaces. Examination of the airframe, engine, and related systems revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operations. It is possible that the student and flight instructor were distracted by the simulated emergency and failed to arrest the descent before impact with trees.
In this accident, the experienced flight instructor failed to safely carry out a routine training maneuver, a simulated forced landing. He had significant levels of two impairing substances in his system at the time (doxylamine and phentermine). Although not conclusive, it is possible that impairing effects of the flight instructor's use of the combination of two psychoactive substances contributed to his failure to intervene in a timely manner to prevent the accident.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to arrest the descent in a timely manner and the flight instructor's failure to safely intervene in the routine training maneuver for reasons that could not be determined based on the information available.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15FA305
- Event ID
- 20150714X65632
- Case number
- CEN15FA305
- 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: c9a5f41ea242c9b48b79d0a46dfbb23366b816c5b2e5fbf1438e843dfd9dc229; retrieved 2026-09-14T19:45:57.267Z.