CEN15LA405 · Piper PA-36-375
Stove Creek Air Piper PA-36-375 · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From Elmwood, NE (private airstrip) to Elmwood, NE (private airstrip)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA405
- 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-36-375
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-36
- 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
- N1057E
- Operator
- Stove Creek Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Elmwood, NE (private airstrip)To Elmwood, NE (private airstrip)
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, before the accident flight, the agricultural application airplane was loaded with 1,500 lbs of seed and 40 gallons of aviation fuel. He reported that there were no anomalies with the airplane during the five previous flights that day or the before-takeoff engine run-up. The accident takeoff was made from a private airstrip toward the south with the flaps partially extended. After applying full engine power, the pilot released the brakes, and the airplane accelerated down the runway. The airplane's tail became airborne about three-quarters down the runway at 75 mph. Although the airplane became airborne before reaching the end of the runway, it was unable to gain additional airspeed or achieve a positive climb rate. The airplane remained in ground effect as it crossed over the runway departure threshold, but it subsequently settled into a corn crop about 1/4 mile past the end of the runway. The pilot stated that he believed that the accident could have been prevented if he had reduced the payload weight for the accident flight.
The pilot reported that, at the time of the accident takeoff, the airplane weighed about 4,500 lbs, which was about 300 lbs below the airplane's maximum gross weight. According to local weather reports, the wind was light and variable at the time of the accident. Performance calculations revealed that, during takeoff at 4,500 lbs with the flaps fully retracted, with no headwind, and from a level hard-surface runway, the airplane would have required about 1,750 ft of runway to achieve liftoff and about 2,650 ft to clear a 50-ft obstacle. The north-south turf runway was 2,600 ft long. The Pilot's Operating Handbook did not provide takeoff performance data for operations from a grass/turf runway or with flaps extended. According to the available performance data, the airplane would likely have required additional runway length to achieve a normal takeoff and positive climb rate after liftoff.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to take off with the airplane near its maximum gross weight from a runway that did not have sufficient length for the airplane to achieve a normal takeoff and positive climb rate after liftoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA405
- Event ID
- 20150910X71634
- Case number
- CEN15LA405
- 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: 3cbf945e498e051dd6662ce7219649241bee78f08b448145b292e3a8b5cab38b; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:45:53.733Z.