GAA16CA092 · Piper PA 46 310P
Fly Safely Piper PA 46 310P · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Wings Field (LOM) to Bay Bridge Airport (W29)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA092
- 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 46 310P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-46
- 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
- N9083U
- Operator
- Fly Safely
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wings Field (LOM), Philadelphia, PATo Bay Bridge Airport (W29), Stevensville, MD
- Aircraft age
- About 29 years (built 1986)
- 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
- Loss of control on ground
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he and his passenger embarked on a cross country flight and intended to land at an airport that borders the Chesapeake Bay. The airport runway approach path extends into the bay and the runway is about 133 feet from the water. The pilot reported that on approach he experienced "gusts/turbulence during the entire approach." The pilot recalled that he made a normal approach as he crossed the bay and when he was over land, he began to flare the airplane. He reported that the airplane "dropped suddenly and I touched down some 20 feet short of the runway" at approximately 75 knots indicated airspeed. The airplane impacted the ground, struck a runway light and became airborne. The pilot attempted to abort the landing by applying full throttle and setting the flaps to 20 degrees, however the airplane settled to the ground, shearing off the landing gear and coming to rest in the safety area north of the runway. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the both wings.
The reported wind at the arrival airport was reported as being from 070 degrees at 8 knots. The runway heading at the arrival airport was 11.
The pilot reported that there were no mechanical failures or anomalies prior to or during the flight that would have prevented normal flight operation
Probable cause
The pilots failure to maintain glide path, descent rate and landing flare, in off shore wind conditions, resulting in a hard landing short of the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA092
- Event ID
- 20151229X61543
- Case number
- GAA16CA092
- 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: 6ef2886f8597ce88d1fe42fa6d10664fe36dc30131d28335a2caea1b1a304ca2; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:03:45.318Z.