WPR18LA124 · Piper PA 34-220T
Piper PA 34-220T · Accident: runway excursion during takeoff
From Lakeland, FL to Airglades Airport (2IS)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR18LA124
- 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 34-220T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-34
- 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
- N8404B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lakeland, FLTo Airglades Airport (2IS), Clewiston, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 37 years (built 1981)
- 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
- Runway excursion
- 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 power plant
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was performing touch-and-go takeoffs and landings in the airport traffic pattern. After touching down, the pilot retracted the flaps and advanced both throttles to takeoff power. Shortly thereafter, he felt the airplane yaw to the right, observed an overboost indicator light for the right engine, and the airplane exited the right side of the runway. The pilot said that once the airplane was in the grass, he regained control of the airplane and reduced both engines to idle power; however, the airplane impacted the edge of a crossing taxiway and briefly became airborne before landing on the opposite side of the taxiway, resulting in substantial damage. Postaccident examination of the airplane did not reveal any evidence of any preexisting mechanical malfunction of the engines or turbocharger systems that would have precluded normal operation. The circumstances of the accident are consistent with the pilot's failure to maintain directional control following an inadvertent overboost of the right engine during takeoff.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during takeoff following an overboost of the right engine during takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR18LA124
- Event ID
- 20180424X85612
- Case number
- WPR18LA124
- 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: 2154bfaf25eaf819d65d427fc495586be25a3e388b39605dc445e00ce9eabc94; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:56:15.708Z.