ERA21LA079 · Piper PA-28-161
Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From New Bedford Regional Airport (KEWB) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21LA079
- 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 PA-28-161
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N8436T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From New Bedford Regional Airport (KEWB), New Bedford, MATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1981)
- 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 · aborted after 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
At the conclusion of a visual flight rules flight, the pilot completed a practice instrument approach to the runway. When he decoupled the autopilot at the conclusion of the approach, he looked up and was momentarily blinded by the setting sun. When he regained sight, the airplane had drifted to the right of the runway centerline. The tower controller then advised him to execute a go-around, and the pilot added full power and held the nose level to gain airspeed before climbing. The airplane subsequently struck a construction barricade on a closed taxiway. The pilot continued around the airport traffic pattern and made a normal landing. As a result of the impact with the barrier, the airplane’s right wing was substantially damaged. The pilot reported that that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures of the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate clearance from obstacles during the attempted go around following an approach to landing in sun glare.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA21LA079
- Event ID
- 20201217102427
- Case number
- ERA21LA079
- 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: 5ee6a2b1f8c1c2f9304de0ad3d4b8f7788498d0da8163ef3f44ee93614d29ba5; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:30:09.760Z.