CEN18LA165 · Piper PA 34-200
Griffith Aviation Piper PA 34-200 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Griffith-Merrillville Airport (05C) to Griffith-Merrillville Airport (05C)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA165
- 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 34-200
- 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
- N99GN
- Operator
- Griffith Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Griffith-Merrillville Airport (05C), Griffith, INTo Griffith-Merrillville Airport (05C), Griffith, IN
- Aircraft age
- About 46 years (built 1972)
- 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 go-around
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot receiving instruction and the flight instructor were conducting multiple approaches to the airport. During a simulated engine-out go-around, when the pilot advanced the throttle of the operating engine to full power, he allowed the airspeed to drop below the single-engine minimum controllable airspeed. Subsequently, the pilot lost airplane control, and the airplane descended and impacted terrain.
Examination of the airplane revealed no evidence of any preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The instructor should have been monitoring the pilot's airspeed control and his failure to do so contributed to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot receiving instruction’s failure to maintain a safe operating airspeed, which resulted in a loss of airplane control. Contributing to the accident was the flight instructor's failure to monitor the pilot's airspeed control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA165
- Event ID
- 20180509X35947
- Case number
- CEN18LA165
- 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: 25ed94c38d4fd1dd1293eaa1ab30d7bc5e9ef7216b77bd74135911310cea75fe; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:07:00.992Z.