CEN20CA405 · Piper PA28 151
Piper PA28 151 · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From Lake in the Hills Airport (3CK) to Phyllis Field (6IL2)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20CA405
- 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 PA28 151
- 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
- N43020
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake in the Hills Airport (3CK), Lake in the Hills, ILTo Phyllis Field (6IL2), Huntley, IL
- Aircraft age
- About 46 years (built 1974)
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was attempting to land, at night, on an unlit grass airstrip. The pilot landed to the right of the runway by about 10 ft. During the rollout the right wing hit a small tree and separated partially from the fuselage at the wing root, resulting in substantial damage. The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to land at night without runway lighting, which resulted in a collision with an object.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20CA405
- Event ID
- 20200921X81023
- Case number
- CEN20CA405
- 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: local date, investigation status, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2020-09-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b87a18b5ee7087e03093a6e2af80105da1bddbbdeb355cff7f2a643a9ed2a277; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:05:04.461Z.