ERA20LA274 · Piper PA32RT 300T
Piper PA32RT 300T · Accident: abnormal runway contact during takeoff
From Cherry Ridge Airport (N30) to Ocean City Municipal Airport (OXB)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA20LA274
- 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 PA32RT 300T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA32
- 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
- N3025L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cherry Ridge Airport (N30), Honesdale, PATo Ocean City Municipal Airport (OXB), Ocean City, MD
- Aircraft age
- About 41 years (built 1979)
- 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
- Abnormal runway contact
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
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 four passengers boarded the airplane for a personal cross-country flight. Although the pilot reported that the airplane veered to the left uncontrollably during the takeoff roll, security camera video showed that the airplane tracked the runway heading until the airplane’s pitch attitude increased to the point where a tail strike occurred about 1,660 ft down the 2,986-ft-long runway. The nose of the airplane then pitched down rapidly; the nose landing gear collapsed; and the airplane veered off the left side of the runway in a nose-low attitude, struck vegetation and terrain, and came to rest. No evidence of any preimpact failures or malfunctions was found during postaccident examination of the airplane.
According to the pilot’s preflight performance calculations, the airplane was about 127.3 pounds below maximum gross weight; the density altitude was 1,227 ft; and the airplane’s estimated takeoff ground roll was 1,500 to 1,600 ft. Review of the weather conditions present at the time of the accident indicated that the density altitude was 2,622 ft. According to the performance charts for the airplane, at a density altitude of 2,622 ft and the airplane weight calculated by the pilot, the airplane’s takeoff ground roll would be about 1,630 ft. A Koch chart indicated that for the accident conditions as compared to standard temperature sea level values, a 28% increase in takeoff distance should have been anticipated by the pilot along with a 21% decrease in climb rate.
Probable cause
The pilot’s premature rotation for takeoff, which resulted in a tail strike and subsequent runway excursion. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s inadequate preflight planning, which failed to accurately determine and account for the effects of high-density altitude on performance.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA20LA274
- Event ID
- 20200801X90550
- Case number
- ERA20LA274
- 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, 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: 9c0c61004b02566638fc849bf0f6ca0c865229c3197297b3f14d99847ce562f2; retrieved 2026-09-16T12:19:59.841Z.