GAA16CA490 · Piper PA 28 140
Piper PA 28 140 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Mid Ohio Valley Regional Airport (PKB) to Mid Ohio Valley Regional Airport (PKB)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA490
- 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 28 140
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N5673U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mid Ohio Valley Regional Airport (PKB), Parkersburg, WVTo Mid Ohio Valley Regional Airport (PKB), Parkersburg, WV
- Aircraft age
- About 47 years (built 1969)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that while on short final during an initial night flight with a student pilot, he commented to the student pilot that the airspeed was low. He then recognized that they were "in a high sink rate" and took over the flight controls. He further reported that he attempted to recover the high sink rate by advancing the throttle to full forward. The engine responded to the throttle input, but the airplane impacted the ground short of the runway threshold and slid about 30 feet left of the runway.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing and empennage.
The flight instructor reported no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The flight instructor’s delayed remedial action during the approach for landing, which resulted in impact with terrain short of the runway threshold. Contributing to the accident was the student pilot’s failure to maintain an appropriate descent rate during the approach for landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA490
- Event ID
- 20160916X32136
- Case number
- GAA16CA490
- 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 2016-09-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 24bd9912331ecac895aee7320277e3eed032318b93fbb0aec9406bb0c6f95957; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:16:30.804Z.