WPR19FA173 · Piper PA-11
Piper PA-11 · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From Columbia Airport (O22) to Modesto City Co-Harry Sham Field (KMOD)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR19FA173
- 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 PA-11
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-11
- 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
- N209H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Columbia Airport (O22), Columbia, CATo Modesto City Co-Harry Sham Field (KMOD), Modesto, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 71 years (built 1948)
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A friend of the pilot located near the lake reported that the pilot had sent him a text message, which said that he was going to do a “fly by” over the lake. The friend stated that, when he saw the airplane, it was about 150 ft above the water and that the pilot did a “wing wag” before the airplane collided with the power lines strung across the water. The airplane subsequently descended nose down into the water. Postaccident examination of the airplane and engine revealed no evidence of any preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Toxicological tests detected a level of ethanol in the pilot’s specimens known to cause some impairment. The test results were also consistent with the pilot having recently consumed alcohol before the flight. Therefore, it is likely that the pilot’s impairment from consuming alcohol contributed to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain clearance from power lines while maneuvering at a low altitude. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s impairment from consuming alcohol before the flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR19FA173
- Event ID
- 20190616X81748
- Case number
- WPR19FA173
- 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: 15c01a9dccbd8f84b0ca7a8872065b4a9aede0553543720431bc93b9910116cf; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:00:05.167Z.