CEN19LA125 · Piper PA-28R-200
Piper PA-28R-200 · Accident: runway excursion during landing
From Sauk Centre Municipal Airport (D39) to Saint Cloud Regional Airport (STC)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19LA125
- 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-28R-200
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N40956
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sauk Centre Municipal Airport (D39), Sauk Centre, MNTo Saint Cloud Regional Airport (STC), St. Cloud, MN
- Aircraft age
- About 46 years (built 1973)
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Runway excursion
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that the airplane operated normally during the personal flight. He stated that before touchdown at the destination airport, he applied left rudder and had the right wing down into the wind to counter the crosswinds and maintain the center line of the runway. At touchdown, he held the control yoke to the right and was applying the brakes; however, the airplane veered left and exited the runway. The airplane traveled about 50 ft into the grass, and the right main landing gear collapsed; the right wing struck the ground and sustained substantial damage. Postaccident examination confirmed flight control continuity. The airplane was equipped with an engine monitoring system, and data indicated that the engine and propeller operated normally during the flight. The pilot reported no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. Weather at the destination airport about 1 hour before the accident was wind from 180° at 13 knots gusting to 20 knots; the automated weather report that the pilot received en route was similar. The crosswind component was within the maximum demonstrated crosswind component for this airplane; however, the pilot stated, "Looking back, I should have never gone up with crosswinds that high, with little to no practice in crosswinds logged in the last 30, 60, [or] 90 days." Thus, it is likely that the pilot failed to maintain directional control during landing in crosswind conditions.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during a crosswind landing. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s decision to land in crosswind conditions given his lack of recent experience in those conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19LA125
- Event ID
- 20190421X72042
- Case number
- CEN19LA125
- 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, coordinates. 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: 878091ee47ab0328d323cee271099c8bf3f89601652a97fcf20fabbd42c4e1cd; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:47:44.879Z.