CEN22LA108 · Piper PA-22-150
Piper PA-22-150 · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) en route
From Addison Airport (ADS) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22LA108
- 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-22-150
- 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
- N6916D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Addison Airport (ADS), Addison, TXTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 65 years (built 1957)
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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
During the night visual flight rules cross-country flight, the pilot monitored weather conditions on his tablet computer and observed “unspecified meteorological conditions,” which encompassed his intended destination. The pilot elected to divert to an alternate destination and climbed to 4,500 ft msl. The pilot noted that he had a kneeboard with destination airport information, and after diverting, he made notes denoting changes to reflect the new destination. He did not recall if he changed the pattern altitude for the new destination. He attributed this omission to distraction during the flight while he modified his flight plan via the airplane radio. As he approached the new destination, the horizon was not “definite,” but he could see the lights of the city and began a shallow descent. While descending, he noted that the city lights disappeared, and as he contemplated why this happened, the airplane struck the ground. He reported that there were no mechanical problems with the airplane before the accident and he “just flew it into the ground.” The field elevation at the original destination was 1,561 ft msl, and the elevation new destination was 2,999 ft msl.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain clearance from terrain during a descent that resulted in an impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22LA108
- Event ID
- 20220125104555
- Case number
- CEN22LA108
- 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 2022-01-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4e79d93c6b7d352baffbed1fa5030b05afe105ba4aa084fe18e65534f2a25d9a; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:54:47.888Z.