ERA20CA111 · Piper PA28 140
Piper PA28 140 · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing on approach
From Mansfield Municipal Airport (1B9) to Cranland Airport (28M)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA20CA111
- 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
- N5792U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mansfield Municipal Airport (1B9), Mansfield, MATo Cranland Airport (28M), Hanson, MA
- Aircraft age
- About 49 years (built 1970)
- 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 go-around
- 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that the student pilot was landing on the 1,760-ft-long runway and flared above the numbers. The airplane floated halfway down the runway and he instructed the student pilot to initiate a go around. With about 1/4 of the runway remaining, the flight instructor was concerned the airplane would not have sufficient airspeed to climb above the tree line. He took control of the airplane and landed in the grass field past the end of the runway. The airplane came to a stop in the mud, the nose gear separated, and the airplane sustained substantial damage to both wings and the firewall. The student pilot reported that, the airplane was "climbing out normally," when "without any warning" the flight instructor took the flight controls. He further reported that, the instructor "completely lost control and was very excited." Airport surveillance video showed the airplane begin to climb out, then abruptly descend towards the runway. The flight instructor further 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 remedial action, which resulted in his decision to perform an off field landing and the airplane's subsequent impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA20CA111
- Event ID
- 20191223X45658
- Case number
- ERA20CA111
- 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: ff3f2f19061062abe398ae5ae8d60882f3d16933314ccc0dbbf561ba2bc8fcd4; retrieved 2026-09-16T10:48:00.478Z.