GAA16CA427 · Piper PA28 181
Western New York Flying Club Piper PA28 181 · Accident: landing area overshoot
From Buffalo Lancaster Regional Airport (BQR) to Hamburg Inc Airport (4G2)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA427
- 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 PA28 181
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N2259Q
- Operator
- Western New York Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Buffalo Lancaster Regional Airport (BQR), Lancaster, NYTo Hamburg Inc Airport (4G2), Hamburg, NY
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1977)
- 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
- Landing area overshoot
- 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 about 7 nautical miles from the airport he mistook a road for the runway, which resulted in the airplane being above the normal approach path for landing. The pilot further reported that he reduced power to idle, applied full flaps, and entered a side slip, but the airplane did not touchdown until about ½ to ¾ down the runway. Subsequently, the airplane overran the runway, the landing gear collapsed, and the right wing impacted a guard rail on a road about 550 feet beyond the runway threshold.
The right wing sustained substantial damage.
The pilot did not report any mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to perform a go-around, which resulted in a landing area overshoot, a runway overrun, a landing gear collapse, and a collision with a guard rail.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA427
- Event ID
- 20160815X01623
- Case number
- GAA16CA427
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2016-08-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: dfaabec9cdd2f4cdb53a0375d62622c4f6abfef6d740f02c8e85898ec050b13b; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:09:16.113Z.