CEN21LA044 · Piper PA-22-135
Piper PA-22-135 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Dunn Center, ND to Dickinson Theodore Roosevelt Regional Airport (DIK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA044
- 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
- 1 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-22-135
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-22
- 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
- N3606A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dunn Center, NDTo Dickinson Theodore Roosevelt Regional Airport (DIK), Dickinson, ND
- Aircraft age
- About 67 years (built 1953)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Experience/knowledge
- 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 noninstrument-rated pilot had landed at a friend’s private airstrip for a visit. The friend, who was also a pilot, reported that the pilot was nervous about the weather conditions and checked the weather every 30 minutes beginning about 2 hours before departing. The friend offered the pilot his vehicle to drive home, but the pilot declined. According to the friend, it was a dark night with low cloud ceilings, light drizzle, and thick fog. The friend stated that he followed the airplane during its takeoff roll to the south using his headlights to illuminate the runway and lost sight of the airplane’s lights in the overcast and fog within seconds after its departure. He heard the airplane’s engine running at high rpm and then heard an impact.
The wreckage was located on top of a hill about 1/4 mile southwest of the airstrip. Ground scars, impact signatures, and wreckage fragmentation patterns were consistent with the airplane impacting terrain in a near 90° bank angle with high forward velocity. The airplane’s impact attitude and speed indicate the pilot had lost control of the airplane. The airplane likely entered instrument meteorological conditions shortly after takeoff, and the pilot lost visual reference to the ground, which resulted in a loss of control.
Probable cause
The noninstrument-rated pilot’s decision to depart into instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in a loss of control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA044
- Event ID
- 20201108102248
- Case number
- CEN21LA044
- 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, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2020-11-08.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4efb647ce909263066bb8f2eb82299e04b01dcbf6e5036a1ab12a820f35fa91a; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:22:08.176Z.