ERA15FA299 · Piper PA-28R 200
Palm Beach Flight Training Piper PA-28R 200 · Accident: loss of visual reference during initial climb
From Florida Keys Marathon International Airport (MTH) to Palm Beach County Park Airport (LNA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15FA299
- 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
- 1 · 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 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
- N54380
- Operator
- Palm Beach Flight Training
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Florida Keys Marathon International Airport (MTH), Marathon, FLTo Palm Beach County Park Airport (LNA), West Palm Beach, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 42 years (built 1973)
- 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
- Loss of visual reference
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the airplane owner, the noninstrument-rated pilot had rented the airplane in Palm Beach, Florida, 1 day before the accident and was not scheduled to return the airplane until the day after the accident. The rental agreement prohibited night flight to or from the Florida Keys. However, about 4 hours after sunset on the night of the accident, the pilot departed an airport on the Florida Keys. Airport security video recorded the airplane becoming airborne, climbing, and beginning to turn right. A witness reported seeing the airplane descending into the water with the engines running. The flight was conducted on a dark, moonless night, and in a sparsely populated area of Florida near the water. No visible horizon could be seen on the video. Based on the dark night conditions, the lack of visual reference at the time of the accident, the pilot's low overall flight time, and the pilot's lack of an instrument rating, it is likely that he became spatially disoriented, which led to the subsequent descent into water.
Examination of the wreckage revealed a right wing low attitude at the time of the impact, which was consistent with the pilot maintaining the right turn seen in the security video recordings. Examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or abnormalities that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain a positive climb rate after takeoff due to spatial disorientation while turning after takeoff in dark night conditions in a sparsely populated area, which resulted in the airplane’s descent into water. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's decision to depart on a night flight over water.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15FA299
- Event ID
- 20150810X33043
- Case number
- ERA15FA299
- 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: 48f81a23bc10787fd189657078f4353e10ca49e008c44ab960118c9ce0e46955; retrieved 2026-09-14T19:49:19.759Z.