WPR19LA066 · Piper PA23 250
Piper PA23 250 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Bowers Field (KELN) to Yakima Air Terminal McAllister Field (YKM)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR19LA066
- 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
- 1 · 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 PA23 250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA23
- 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
- N14372
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bowers Field (KELN), Ellensburg, WATo Yakima Air Terminal McAllister Field (YKM), Yakima, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 47 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
- En route · cruise
- 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 › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The instrument rated pilot departed into marginal visual flight rules conditions between sunset and the end of civil twilight. Shortly after takeoff, he contacted air traffic control and stated that he was in the clouds at 5,000 ft mean sea level (msl) and requested an instrument landing system approach at the destination airport. The controller issued the airplane a discrete transponder code and asked the pilot if he wanted an IFR clearance; however, the pilot did not respond, and no further communications were received from the airplane. Radar data showed that the airplane entered a descending left turn before radar contact was lost about 3,050 ft msl. Witnesses and surveillance video indicated that the airplane descended out of the clouds in a steep, nose-low attitude and impacted terrain. The extensive fragmentation of the wreckage precluded a thorough examination of the airplane's flight controls, instruments, and other systems; however, no anomalies were noted during examination of the engines. AIRMETs for instrument flight rules (IFR), mountain obscuration, turbulence, and icing conditions were all valid for the area of the accident site at the time of the accident. Both the departure and destination airports reported overcast ceilings below 2,000 ft above ground level about the time of the accident, with surface temperatures just above freezing. An atmospheric sounding indicated a high potential for light rime icing and moderate turbulence at 5,000 ft in the vicinity of the accident site, and radar imagery suggested clouds and potential light icing conditions. There was no evidence that the pilot obtained a weather briefing before departure. Although impact damage precluded a thorough examination of the airplane's flight instruments, the restricted visibility and lighting conditions present at the time were conducive to the development of spatial disorientation, and the airplane's descending turn and high-energy impact are consistent with the known effects of spatial disorientation.
Probable cause
The instrument rated pilot’s loss of control due to spatial disorientation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR19LA066
- Event ID
- 20190117X24841
- Case number
- WPR19LA066
- 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, cause areas. 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: b3d674cbb413fc543738cf2630556bd4593a9174abd60b334fc60a3effb181e1; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:53:07.012Z.