ERA17LA267 · Piper PA28 140
Piper PA28 140 · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) on approach
From Blairstown Airport (1N7) to Sky Manor Airport (N40)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA267
- 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 140
- 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
- N56884
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Blairstown Airport (1N7), Blairstown, NJTo Sky Manor Airport (N40), Pittstown, NJ
- Aircraft age
- About 44 years (built 1973)
- 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
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot owned the airplane and intended to conduct a 20-minute night, cross-country flight to a nearby airport for avionics installation. During a circling descent to the destination airport, the airplane collided with trees and terrain, which resulted in a postcrash fire.
Examination of the wreckage did not reveal any evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The student had a total flight experience of 105 hours, of which 5 hours were at night. He had not flown during the 90-day period preceding the accident.
Probable cause
The student pilot's improper decision to conduct a night flight and his failure to maintain adequate altitude during the approach, which resulted in controlled flight into trees and terrain. Contributing to the accident was the student pilot's lack of total and recent night flight experience.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17LA267
- Event ID
- 20170806X32829
- Case number
- ERA17LA267
- 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 2017-08-06.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 262ac9d5dca2b03dda9978d93a42e92120a7840638c37f193de8ce693c961611; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:40:11.877Z.