GAA19CA350 · Piper PA28 140
Piper PA28 140 · Accident: loss of control on ground during takeoff
From Brunswick Executive Airport (BXM) to Merrymeeting Field (08B)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA19CA350
- 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 PA28 140
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N7227F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brunswick Executive Airport (BXM), Brunswick, METo Merrymeeting Field (08B), Bowdoinham, ME
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1968)
- 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 · rejected 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 on ground
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that, while demonstrating a soft-field takeoff for a student pilot, he maintained full back pressure with the control yoke; lowered the flaps to 10°; lined up on the wet, grass, 1,900-ft-long runway; and added full power. He further noted that the airplane was not accelerating as anticipated due to the runway condition. The airplane lifted off about two-thirds of the way down the runway, and he decided that the airspeed of 65 mph was "not adequate." Additionally, he saw tall trees at the end of the runway, so he decided to abort the takeoff and land on the remaining runway. He added that he reduced power, that the airplane touched down, and that he applied the brakes but that, "due to the slick conditions," the airplane overran the runway and went down an embankment, and the right landing gear struck a rock hidden by the tall grass. The airplane continued across a gravel road and came to rest in a yard.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing and the fuselage.
The instructor reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's delayed decision to abort the takeoff from a wet, grass runway with insufficient runway remaining, which resulted in a runway overrun and the airplane going down an embankment.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA19CA350
- Event ID
- 20190607X32426
- Case number
- GAA19CA350
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: dd2fe3944b01ffc00006d34a4bc13998863fd6f00b527540476a96c61634aafa; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:11:26.837Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. 08B is Merrymeeting Field at Bowdoinham, ME; 'Nowdoinham' is not a place and is a misspelling.