ERA20CA282 · Piper PA32 260
Piper PA32 260 · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Westchester County Airport (HPN) to Montauk Airport (MTP)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA20CA282
- 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 PA32 260
- 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
- N4817S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Westchester County Airport (HPN), White Plains, NYTo Montauk Airport (MTP), Montauk, NY
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1969)
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- 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 was attempting to land the airplane on the 75-ft-wide runway at the destination airport. He reported that during landing, the airplane bounced, and a gust of wind blew the airplane to the left side of the runway. He further stated he was having problems getting the airplane to settle back down on the runway and was afraid to advance the throttle due to being blown off the runway. The airplane subsequently struck trees off the side of the runway and both wings were substantially damaged. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures of the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. The weather conditions reported at the airport about the time of the landing included a wind from 27 degrees left of the runway heading at a velocity of 6 knots, or a left crosswind component of 3 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper recovery from a bounced landing and failure to maintain directional control, which resulted in a runway excursion and collision with trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA20CA282
- Event ID
- 20200811X84853
- Case number
- ERA20CA282
- 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: a8ef914dd05689df5fbefdd03c0f13149ffaa7f630352de9d971768b9cc221a0; retrieved 2026-09-16T12:29:21.782Z.