ERA17LA225 · Piper PA 15
Piper PA 15 · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during takeoff
From Farmville, VA to Frederick Municipal Airport (FDK)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA225
- 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
- 0
- 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 15
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-15
- 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
- N4195H
- Operator
- Philip Cianciolo
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Farmville, VATo Frederick Municipal Airport (FDK), Frederick, MD
- Aircraft age
- About 69 years (built 1948)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the cross-country flight, the pilot performed a precautionary landing in a field due to a possible fuel flow issue. After determining that fuel was flowing to the engine, the pilot attempted to depart from the field, which was covered in high vegetation. The pilot reported that the condition of the field resulted in inadequate airspeed to climb out and clear the trees at the end of the field. The pilot initiated a turn, during which he exceeded the airplane's critical angle of attack, resulting in an aerodynamic stall and impact with terrain. The left wing impacted terrain and the airplane cartwheeled. It came to rest upright, in the field and was destroyed by a postcrash fire.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper decision to depart from an unsuitable off-airport surface which resulted in his subsequent exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack, an aerodynamic stall and loss of control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17LA225
- Event ID
- 20170703X54557
- Case number
- ERA17LA225
- 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, cause areas. 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: e5505bea842dfcce6419687dd19eea3cba8db50145cf35603b7b7796a008f3d1; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:29:22.116Z.