ERA22LA253 · Piper PA28 161
Piper PA28 161 · Accident: runway excursion during landing
From Republic Airport (FRG) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22LA253
- 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 161
- 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
- N2973K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Republic Airport (FRG), Farmingdale, NYTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 43 years (built 1979)
- 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
- Landing · aborted after touchdown
- 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
- Runway excursion
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
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 was on a cross country flight and at the destination airport entered the right downwind leg of the airport traffic pattern, then turned onto right base leg of the airport traffic pattern. Because of “excessive wind gusts” on final approach he performed a go-around and remained in the traffic pattern for the same runway. On final approach the flight again encountered a wind gust and the airplane descended. He added power to arrest the descent but the airplane then floated down the runway. The airplane touched down just prior to a taxiway, with about 959 ft of runway available. He applied the brakes but realized he would be unable to stop before the runway end. He applied power to abort the landing, but the airplane did not climb as he expected and it travelled off the end of the runway into a farm field. He did not recall if he applied the brakes or reduced power in an attempt to abort the aborted landing. The airplane impacted a metal frame that enclosed plants and came to rest with the nose landing gear collapsed. The engine mount was substantially damaged. He reported that when he added full power to go-around the engine responded, the airplane was decelerating with initial brake application, and there was nothing mechanically wrong with the airplane that resulted in the runway excursion. Postaccident examination revealed the flap selector was in the retracted position.
Probable cause
The pilot’s delayed decision to abort the landing, which resulted in a runway overrun.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22LA253
- Event ID
- 20220601105166
- Case number
- ERA22LA253
- 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: cd4a1b66ea54a24aee0c53e0785dbc8265fdc40be4c12eb856bec9de39cefa2e; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:16:31.171Z.