ERA22LA162 · Czech Sport Aircraft AS PIPER SPORT
Read Aviation Czech Sport Aircraft AS PIPER SPORT · Accident en route
From Marathon, FL to APH · Naples, GA
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination and damage. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22LA162
- 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
- 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
Czech Sport Aircraft AS PIPER SPORT
- Aircraft type
- Czech Sport PIPER SPORT
- 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
- N811PS
- Operator
- Read Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From Marathon, FLTo APH · Naples, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 12 years (built 2010)
- 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 · cruise
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial Possible conflict
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Not determined › Not determined
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and two friends flew their individual airplanes from their home airport on the mainland to an airport on an island in the Florida Keys to meet for lunch. Upon arrival, the pilot landed opposite the direction of other landing traffic and subsequently taxied erratically for 6 minutes, unresponsive to radio calls. The pilot had to be directed by a lineman to park at the location where his friends waited. The lineman stated that the pilot had difficulty getting out of the airplane, appeared “befuddled,” and did not respond to questions. When confronted by another pilot about the opposite-direction landing, the pilot did not respond, and his friends defended him. The lineman reported that the pilot was “devastated” by what he had done, but the only unusual behavior cited by his friends was that the pilot did not eat his lunch. The accident occurred on the return flight, which was conducted during the day and in visual meteorological conditions, and during which the airplane was lost from radar over the Gulf of Mexico. Debris from the airplane was recovered from the surface of the ocean, and the airplane was presumed to be destroyed. Flight track data revealed multiple altitude, heading, and speed excursions on both the accident flight and the previous flight; however, the airplane’s flight track was not erratic at the time radar contact was lost. Pre-event medical records showed that the pilot had multiple medical conditions that significantly increased his risk for a sudden cardiovascular event, including coronary artery disease with stenting of several coronary arteries, previous myocardial infarct, hypertension, high lipid levels, diabetes, and obesity. The pilot’s remains were not recovered, and no autopsy was performed. Based on operational evidence, including interviews, flight track data, and medical risk factors, the pilot may have been medically impaired or incapacitated at the time of the accident; however, given the available medical evidence, the reason for the impairment could not be determined.
Probable cause
The airplane’s collision with water for underdetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22LA162
- Event ID
- 20220321104804
- Case number
- ERA22LA162
- 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: 49722140a59722bf7913618659ab6b0c8c605eb83cc26b2b17fc79f920ab8744; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:42:16.945Z.