ERA17LA328 · Piper J3C 65
Piper J3C 65 · Accident: abrupt maneuver while maneuvering
From Herron Airport (7G1) to Herron Airport (7G1)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA328
- 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 J3C 65
- Aircraft type
- Piper J3
- 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
- N38365
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Herron Airport (7G1), New Cumberland, WVTo Herron Airport (7G1), New Cumberland, WV
- Aircraft age
- About 76 years (built 1941)
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Abrupt maneuver
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was conducting a local, personal flight. He reported that, about 1,000 ft above ground level and as he began turning the airplane left, it rolled faster than he expected and then "rolled over" into an inverted attitude. The pilot regained control of the airplane, and when the airplane was straight and level, he saw treetops. He tried to pull up, but the airplane impacted trees and then terrain, which resulted in substantial damage to the airframe.
The pilot stated, and a postaccident examination of the airplane confirmed, that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures of the flight controls that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain roll control while maneuvering, which resulted in a collision with trees and terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17LA328
- Event ID
- 20170916X73434
- Case number
- ERA17LA328
- 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: 18f590b0f9062283165a4868df0c304173a65d455db0e88c279d9c30d74d7dc0; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:51:09.285Z.