CEN18LA328 · Piper PA32R 300
Dbg Aviation Piper PA32R 300 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Beloit Airport (44C) to Baraboo Wisconsin Dells Regional Airport (DLL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA328
- 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 PA32R 300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA32
- 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
- N9894K
- Operator
- Dbg Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Beloit Airport (44C), Beloit, WITo Baraboo Wisconsin Dells Regional Airport (DLL), Baraboo, WI
- Aircraft age
- About 40 years (built 1978)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot indicated that soon after takeoff for the personal flight, the airplane's engine cowling opened and began to swing back and forth. Concerned the cowling might fracture the windshield, he reduced engine power to land straight ahead, but, after realizing that the runway remaining was insufficient to do so, he attempted to climb and return to the runway. During his attempted go-around, the airplane began to descend and then impacted a cornfield off the end of the runway. Examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal flight operations. The pilot stated that he was very startled by the opening of the cowling, which distracted him from maintaining airspeed.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain airspeed after being startled and distracted when the engine cowling opened during takeoff, which led to a subsequent impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA328
- Event ID
- 20180813X62834
- Case number
- CEN18LA328
- 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: 071ebf1f5a9dd17076ab2d4060148ae3857acaa0fd052a233f753fc2d3b56443; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:05:14.336Z.