WPR20FA079 · Piper PA28 140
Piper PA28 140 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Payson Airport (PAN) to Falcon Field (FFZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20FA079
- 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
- N3672K
- Operator
- Colton T Egbert · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Payson Airport (PAN), Payson, AZTo Falcon Field (FFZ), Mesa, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 53 years (built 1967)
- 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
- 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
- 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 pilot and passengers decided to fly over the nearby mountains so the passengers could spot wildlife on the terrain below. The pilot and surviving passenger recalled the airplane running well as they made a turn towards the mountains, but neither reported any memories of the flight after that point. Radar flight track data showed the airplane depart and fly to the mountains while maintaining an altitude of about 1,000 ft above ground level. The airplane completed a turning maneuver and descended into a canyon. Near the accident site, the flight track was consistent with the pilot maneuvering to avoid rising terrain. The accident site debris field was in a down-canyon direction.
Examination of the wreckage and the accident site revealed that the airplane was in a nose-high attitude at the time of impact and possibly nearing the stall speed of the airplane. The propeller damage suggests that the engine was producing power at the time of impact. The examination of the wreckage revealed no anomalies with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to fly into a canyon with rising terrain, and his subsequent loss of aircraft control while maneuvering away from rising terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20FA079
- Event ID
- 20200124X92932
- Case number
- WPR20FA079
- 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: b45e351bfe7e793a505321528532113d2bf0dd342ec1e8994f33f0a3ab334f00; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:10:57.965Z.