GAA16CA278 · Piper PA24 260
Piper PA24 260 · Accident: landing area undershoot
From Medina Municipal Airport (1G5) to Medina Municipal Airport (1G5)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA278
- 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 PA24 260
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA24
- 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
- N991K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Medina Municipal Airport (1G5), Medina, OHTo Medina Municipal Airport (1G5), Medina, OH
- Aircraft age
- About 52 years (built 1964)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Landing area undershoot
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that during a biennial flight review, the flight instructor requested that a simulated loss of engine power landing be performed while in the traffic pattern. On the base leg, it was determined that they would not reach the runway, and power was added so that a normal landing could be completed. The pilot further reported, that while on short final, the flight instructor called for more power to be added, which resulted in a pitch up attitude. Subsequently, the pilot reacted by pitching the airplane's nose down, but he inadvertently reduced power to idle. The airplane continued to sink and touched down in the grass a few feet prior to the runway threshold, which resulted in a collision with the runway threshold. The nose and right main landing gear collapsed, and a runway excursion off the left side of the runway occurred.
The right wing was substantially damaged.
The pilot did not report any mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadvertent power reduction during landing, which resulted in a runway undershoot, collision with the runway threshold, nose and right main landing gear collapse, and runway excursion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA278
- Event ID
- 20160606X45524
- Case number
- GAA16CA278
- 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: fb208b4f85e642357462dbc2d1a968f350b751fcd0890061c0e03b40d92d7b78; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:27:52.527Z.