ERA20CA240 · Piper PA28R 180
Nexgen Aviation Piper PA28R 180 · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Bowman Field (LOU) to Samuels Field (BRY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA20CA240
- 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 PA28R 180
- 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
- N3725T
- Operator
- NexGen Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bowman Field (LOU), Louisville, KYTo Samuels Field (BRY), Bardstown, KY
- 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
- 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 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
- Substantial
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 commercial pilot reported that he was preparing for a flight instructor practical examination, with a flight instructor onboard acting as a student pilot. After demonstrating several normal and short field takeoff and landings, the commercial pilot began to demonstrate a soft field takeoff. The commercial pilot reported that he "smoothly applied full power" and verified that the engine instruments were operating normally. He further reported that shortly after liftoff, while the airplane was in ground effect, the left wing dipped, and he attempted to correct the lateral bank with right aileron, however the left-wing continued to drop. Subsequently, the flight instructor stated, "we're stalling!" as the airplane touched down on the left side of the runway in a nose high, left wing down attitude. The airplane veered off the runway and the right main landing gear collapsed. During the runway excursion, the right wing sustained substantial damage. Neither pilots reported any preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane.
Probable cause
The commercial pilot's exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack and subsequent loss of lateral bank control during a soft field takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA20CA240
- Event ID
- 20200706X24852
- Case number
- ERA20CA240
- 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. 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: 761883c757441a30ff801b24b2e2a8118aeab2377c0ccda92086a5d4b96bb657; retrieved 2026-09-16T12:03:27.891Z.