ERA15LA356 · Piper PA-24
Piper PA-24 · Accident: runway excursion during landing
From General Wayne A. Downing Peoria International Airport (PIA) to Igor I Sikorsky Memorial Airport (BDR)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA356
- 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-24
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N7708P
- Operator
- Kumar Sanjay
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From General Wayne A. Downing Peoria International Airport (PIA), Peoria, ILTo Igor I Sikorsky Memorial Airport (BDR), Stratford, CT
- Aircraft age
- About 54 years (built 1961)
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- Runway excursion
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that, as the airplane approached the airport after the cross-country flight, he checked the weather, which indicated that the surface wind was from 230 degrees at 10 knots. He chose to land on runway 29 because runway 24 was closed. He stated that, on final approach, the "crosswind became evident." After touchdown, the airplane veered sharply left. The pilot used steering and braking inputs to keep the airplane on the runway, but his efforts were not successful, and there was no noticeable reduction in speed. The airplane subsequently exited the runway surface and spun sharply left. The right main landing gear collapsed, and the right wing impacted the ground. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage, empennage, and right wing. Examination of the brakes, rudder, and nose wheel steering systems revealed no discrepancies.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control while landing in a crosswind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA356
- Event ID
- 20150914X20901
- Case number
- ERA15LA356
- 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: 987f32a7d401ef0d1cd65d84276a9b41e45a41903252942c3ebf2bf44ffef237; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:46:14.791Z.