CEN18LA378 · Piper PA32 300
Piper PA32 300 · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Hereford Municipal Airport (HRX) to Reagan County Airport (E41)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA378
- 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 PA32 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
- N4078W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hereford Municipal Airport (HRX), Hereford, TXTo Reagan County Airport (E41), Big Lake, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 52 years (built 1966)
- 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot lost control of the airplane during takeoff; it subsequently impacted the ground near the departure end of the runway and was destroyed. The pilot reported that she had no memory of her preflight activity or takeoff. A witness observed the airplane in a nose-high, tail-low attitude during the takeoff but lost sight of the airplane behind hangars. He noted that the engine sounded like it was at full power. Postaccident examination of the airplane did not reveal any evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Data recovered from an onboard engine monitor did not reveal any indication of a loss of engine power during takeoff. The airplane was loaded within the gross weight and center-of-gravity limits. Performance data indicated that the available runway length was sufficient for takeoff. It is likely that the pilot overrotated during takeoff and the airplane entered an aerodynamic stall, which resulted in the airplane departing controlled flight and impacting the ground.
Probable cause
The pilot’s exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack during takeoff, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA378
- Event ID
- 20180910X84855
- Case number
- CEN18LA378
- 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: 7685fbe1c20a7fa065cbfd171b45a532da6f4e49eb3d7374755d12aad9d6be19; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:14:00.749Z.