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ERA22LA143 · Piper PA28 150

2 Mar 2022 · Manassas, VA, United States

Piper PA28 150 · Accident: loss of control on ground during takeoff

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Event

NTSB case
ERA22LA143
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 PA28 150

Aircraft type
Piper PA28
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
N5627W
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From not recordedTo not recorded
Aircraft age
About 60 years (built 1962)
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
Takeoff
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
Loss of control on ground
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 systems
  • Personnel issues › Action/decision
  • Personnel issues › Psychological

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The flight instructor reported that, during the takeoff portion of a touch-an-go landing, the student applied an “extreme amount” of left rudder and the airplane began to veer left and impacted a light with the wingtip, which resulted in substantial damage to the right wing. The instructor stated that he was not guarding the rudder pedals and attempted to assume control of the airplane, but the event happened very quickly and there was not enough time to correct and center the airplane over the runway. The instructor stated that during debriefing later, the student indicated that he lost control of the rudder. Post-accident inspection of the rudder flight control system by the Federal Aviation Administration revealed no evidence of preimpact failure or malfunction.

Probable cause

The student pilot’s improper left rudder input after power application during the touch-and-go landing which resulted in a runway excursion and collision with airport lighting equipment. Contributing to the accident was the flight instructor’s inadequate supervision of the student.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record ERA22LA143
Event ID
20220304104723
Case number
ERA22LA143
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: 547b22374a3e1e706d4c06b1f9fbf15774f7fc3661fea6694bacb09adfbb1fb2; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:00:39.552Z.