WPR18WA180 · Piper PA31
Madagascar Trans Air Piper PA31 · Accident while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR18WA180
- 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
- Unknown · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- API-reported fatalities
- 5 · 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
- Not recorded
Piper PA31
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA31
- 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
- 5R-MKF
- Operator
- Madagascar Trans Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
On June 18, 2018, about 0615 local time, a Piper PA-31 airplane, 5R-MKF, impacted terrain about 5 nautical miles from the Ivato International Airport, Antananarivo, Madagascar. The pilot in command, two pilot observers, pilot monitor, and one passenger were fatally injured, and the airplane was substantially damaged. The flight was operated by Madagascar Trans Air as an instructional flight under the pertinent civil regulations for the government of Madagascar.
The investigation is under the jurisdiction of the Bureau des Enquêtes des Accidents et Incidents de l'Aviation Civile (BEAC). This report is for information purposes only and contains only information released by the BEAC. Further information pertaining to this accident may be obtained from:
Bureau des Enquêtes des Accidents et Incidents
de l'Aviation Civile (BEAC)
Ministère des Transports
Rue Jules Ranaivo
Anosy, Antananarivo
Madagascar
Tel.: (261) 20 22 24604
(261) 20 22 44757
www.transport.gov.mg
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR18WA180
- Event ID
- 20180627X35902
- Case number
- WPR18WA180
- 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.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 077068b73c1550f30148392597c3a91bb55cb6b5412d7ac893c2660aa995b585; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:43:12.396Z.