ERA22FA047 · Piper PA30 C
Piper PA30 C · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin en route
From LaGrange Callaway Airport (LGC) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22FA047
- 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
- 0
- 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 PA30 C
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA30
- 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
- N8924Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From LaGrange Callaway Airport (LGC), LaGrange, GATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 52 years (built 1969)
- 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
- En route · descent
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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 › Psychological
- 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 pilot had recently purchased the airplane and departed on a multileg flight to pick up the airplane and its logbook and return to the pilot’s home airport. Automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) data showed that about 2 hours into the last leg of the flight, the pilot descended and began to maneuver several miles from the intended airport. At that time, the pilot initiated several phone calls to a mechanic to report that the landing gear circuit breaker kept popping. The mechanic provided guidance on the manual gear extension process. About 45 minutes later, during the final call to the mechanic, the pilot stated that he needed to add “some power,” and then the call dropped. At that time ADS-B data showed the airplane at an altitude of 1,025 ft mean sea level (msl) and a groundspeed of 63 knots. Examination of the engines and airframe revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation. All landing gear were in the down and-locked positions at the time of the accident. Laboratory testing of the green landing gear “down locked” light bulb revealed that the bulb filament had fractured and that no hot filament stretching was present, indicating that the bulb was either burned out before impact or not illuminated at the time of impact. The timing of the filament fracture could not be determined. Given the burned-out light bulb and the position of the landing gear at the time of the accident, it is likely that the landing gear indication (the popped circuit breaker) was erroneous and that the gear was down and locked while the pilot was attempting to manually lower the landing gear. Given that ADS-B data showed that the airplane was at 1,025 ft msl and 63 knots groundspeed at the time that the pilot indicated that he needed to add power, it is likely that, with his focus on the manual gear extension process and phone calls, the pilot failed to monitor his airspeed. The airplane likely slowed below its stall speed, resulting in an exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack, which led to an aerodynamic stall from which the pilot could not recover because of the airplane’s low altitude.
Probable cause
The pilot’s exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack while troubleshooting a landing gear indication, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall at low altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22FA047
- Event ID
- 20211106104210
- Case number
- ERA22FA047
- 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: a13075c5e05d8dc3163e5ffc166a4bf8bc953a6bf2833c83f8db7361c9d2f17d; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:36:55.072Z.