CEN21LA185 · Piper PA-28-181
Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: windshear or thunderstorm during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA185
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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-28-181
- 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
- N21175
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 43 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
- 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
- Windshear or thunderstorm
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that during takeoff, the airplane’s airspeed momentarily stopped about 40 knots and then increased again, and the airplane reached its rotation speed, about 60 knots, about one-half to two-thirds down the runway. The airplane lifted off, but the pilot noticed no gain in airspeed and altitude as he began to climb out. He pitched the nose down as the stall warning horn came on, and he landed the airplane firmly on the remaining runway. The pilot could not maintain directional control following the firm landing and the airplane exited the runway striking a windsock with its right wing. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the outboard right wing. The pilot reported there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. At the time of the accident, the pilot was taking off on runway 29 with a left quartering crosswind of 10 knots that shifted to a tailwind.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain directional control during the rejected takeoff with a left quartering crosswind that shifted to a tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA185
- Event ID
- 20210408102894
- Case number
- CEN21LA185
- 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: 36ec76452429dedf9471ac277dbcae7e04d4b4644b46ef0efea370b0a0aa3ed1; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:56:12.813Z.