CEN20FA038 · Piper PA28 140
X-Cell Aviation Flight Training Center Piper PA28 140 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Evansville Regional Airport (EVV) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20FA038
- 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 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
- N601FL
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Evansville Regional Airport (EVV), Evansville, INTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1971)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was flying to an airport about 60 miles north of the departure airport. About 18 miles short of the destination airport, the pilot informed air traffic control (ATC) that he was returning to his departure airport and performed a 180° turn to the south. The pilot did not report any problems or concerns to ATC during the flight and he was cleared to land on runway 18 at the departure airport. Witnesses observed the airplane enter a right descending turn and impact a field about 2 miles north of the airport. No anomalies were noted with the airframe or engine during postaccident examination that would have resulted in a loss of aircraft control. According to the autopsy of the pilot, the cause of death was multiple blunt force injuries; however, the autopsy was limited due to the injuries the pilot received. The pilot’s medical records demonstrated the pilot had severe coronary disease than was not fully identified by the limited autopsy. The disease had progressed over the previous 20 years and placed the pilot at risk of sudden symptoms such as shortness of breath, chest pain, disturbances in heart rhythm causing palpitations and fainting. Heart rhythm problems leave no evidence at autopsy and even large heart attacks do not leave autopsy evidence if death occurs within about 3 hours. The absence of findings during the autopsy were not indicative that an acute cardiac event did not occur. Based on available evidence from the pilot’s medical records, it was possible that the pilot had experienced a sudden incapacitation due to an acute cardiac event, which led to a loss of control of the airplane. However, this could not be definitively determined based on a lack of additional corroborating operational evidence.
Based on available evidence from the pilot’s medical records, the most likely explanation for the accident is sudden incapacitation of the pilot due to an acute cardiac event, which led to a loss of control of the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain control of the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20FA038
- Event ID
- 20191221X83621
- Case number
- CEN20FA038
- 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: dcbe771c2d3d671aac62d9a0d139726e032b7e3de454ddcf123626b1c9ea1e47; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:09:43.926Z.