WPR21LA319 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR21LA319
- 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-28-140
- 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
- N1651J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 53 years (built 1968)
- 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
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, he conducted a maximum performance takeoff by adding full power and holding the brakes until engine RPM stabilized. The pilot released the brakes, and upon reaching rotation speed, the airplane drifted left. He maneuvered the airplane toward the runway centerline, and it touched down onto the runway briefly before it became airborne again. The airplane ascended to about 100 ft above ground level, before it began descending. The pilot stated that, there was no available runway remaining, so he initiated a forced landing to the uneven terrain ahead. During the landing roll, the airplane struck a fence and vegetation substantially damaging the fuselage.
The pilot reported that prior to takeoff, he calculated the airplane’s weight with passengers and fuel, and determined it to be about 20 pounds under the maximum gross weight of the airplane. However, the pilot did not conduct preflight performance calculations prior to takeoff.
The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation and that if he took more time in preflight preparations, he would have noticed that the density altitude was too high to takeoff.
The pilot operating handbook take-off distance vs. density altitude chart states “extrapolation of chart above 7,000 ft. [density altitude] is invalid. The calculated density altitude at the time of the accident was 9,000 ft mean sea level (msl).
Probable cause
The airplane’s inability to maintain altitude during the initial climb due to a degradation in the airplane’s performance due to high-density altitude conditions. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s failure to conduct preflight performance planning calculations.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR21LA319
- Event ID
- 20210816103701
- Case number
- WPR21LA319
- 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 2021-08-13.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f15f133f6ee5bdb7618afd3d2f4fd118ef8b88ef1d59ad228c5f4a8f7f28f4df; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:25:13.834Z.