ERA16LA236 · Piper PA34 200
Piper PA34 200 · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Fairfield County Airport (FDW) to Fairfield County Airport (FDW)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA236
- 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 PA34 200
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA34
- 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
- N44311
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fairfield County Airport (FDW), Winnsboro, SCTo Fairfield County Airport (FDW), Winnsboro, SC
- Aircraft age
- About 42 years (built 1974)
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and commercial pilot were conducting a currency flight in the multi-engine airplane. After completing an instrument approach, they transitioned to a visual approach and prepared to land. The pilot flared the airplane too high, and the instructor advised the pilot to lower the nose and add power, which he did. The pilot again flared too high, and the instructor was concerned that the airplane was going to stall. The instructor started to reach for the controls when the pilot initiated a go-around. The instructor said the pilot simultaneously pushed both throttles forward and that the airplane suddenly rolled to the right at a height between 2 and 4 ft above the ground. The instructor did not take control of the airplane at any time. The airplane's right wing and main landing gear struck the ground, and the airplane veered off the right side of the runway. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical deficiencies that would have precluded normal operation. The horizontal stabilator trim actuator was positioned toward the full nose-up position, which most likely resulted in the nose of the airplane pitching up farther than expected when the pilot added power, which increased the airplane's angle of attack and exacerbated its already critically slow airspeed, resulting in an aerodynamic stall.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain sufficient airspeed during a go-around, and the flight instructor's delayed remedial action, which resulted in the airplane exceeding its critical angle of attack and experiencing an aerodynamic stall. Contributing to the accident was the airplane's nose-up trim setting, which further increased its angle of attack upon application of engine power during the go-around.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA236
- Event ID
- 20160630X33949
- Case number
- ERA16LA236
- 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: 543847b7fa95102a71ad880235a66a7af0624b2039f5e95c66a0e5fb02995da4; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:35:29.914Z.