CEN20LA321 · Piper PA28R 201
Piper PA28R 201 · Accident: runway excursion during takeoff
From Seiling Airport (1S4) to Stillwater Regional Airport (SWO)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20LA321
- 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 201
- 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
- N9765C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Seiling Airport (1S4), Seiling, OKTo Stillwater Regional Airport (SWO), Stillwater, OK
- Aircraft age
- About 42 years (built 1978)
- 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 · rejected 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
- Runway excursion
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot planned to depart from a 2,435-ft-long runway, and reported that, with the three passengers and the amount of fuel onboard, the airplane was about 127 lbs below the maximum takeoff weight and required 1,700 to 1,800 ft of runway for takeoff. The pilot began the takeoff roll about 117 ft from the takeoff end of the runway with the wing flaps retracted for a normal takeoff. During the takeoff roll, the pilot noticed a sound and vibration from the engine, then about 5 seconds and 668 ft later he reduced engine power to abort the takeoff. He was unable to stop the airplane on the remaining runway and it continued off the end of the runway, over a road, and into trees. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing.
Postaccident performance calculations revealed that the takeoff roll was greater than that calculated by the pilot; about 2,1000 ft. A postaccident examination of the engine and airframe did not reveal any mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The recorded engine and GPS data did not reveal any anomalies. The data showed that the pilot likely began to abort the takeoff, about 547 ft from the end of the runway, and likely only applied the brakes and began to significantly slow the airplane about 304 ft from the end of the runway, which was not sufficient distance to stop the airplane before exiting the runway surface.
Probable cause
The pilot’s incorrect takeoff performance calculations and delayed aborted takeoff, which resulted in a runway excursion and collision with trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20LA321
- Event ID
- 20200803X23905
- Case number
- CEN20LA321
- 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: 0665898ff8ebdf38190748726a15154afb02e12faf33c3d9fe6c9c255800e98a; retrieved 2026-09-16T12:20:46.127Z.