ERA22LA414 · Piper PA-39
Piper PA-39 · Accident: medical event during takeoff
From an unrecorded airport to Eastern Slopes Regional Airport (IZG)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22LA414
- 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
- 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 PA-39
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-39
- 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
- N8925Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Eastern Slopes Regional Airport (IZG), Fryeburg, ME
- Aircraft age
- About 52 years (built 1970)
- 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 · rejected 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
- Medical event
- 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 › Physical
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 84-year-old pilot and the passenger made two attempts to take off on a cross-country flight. According to the passenger, once she and the pilot boarded the airplane, the pilot said he forgot where they were going and had to ask the name of the airport. After informing the pilot of their destination, the pilot taxied to the runway and began to accelerate for takeoff. The pilot aborted the takeoff because he thought the passenger’s door was open. The door was secured, and the pilot taxied back to the runway. Just before taking off again, the pilot asked a second time where they were going. The passenger again had to tell the pilot their destination. The pilot initiated the takeoff roll, but aborted because he felt something was wrong with the airplane. The airplane went off the end of the runway, resulting in substantial damage to the left wing. When first responders arrived on scene, they noted the pilot was confused and had memory problems. The pilot was hospitalized for neurological evaluation and consultation. Magnetic resonance imaging of the pilot’s brain performed the day after the accident demonstrated an acute-to-subacute lacunar stroke in the right medial temporal lobe. The pilot was discharged from the hospital with a diagnosis of transient global amnesia. As such, the pilot most likely experienced an acute cerebrovascular event. Impairing symptoms of this event likely diminished his situational awareness and prompted him to intentionally abort the takeoff, resulting in the runway excursion.
Probable cause
The pilot’s acute cerebrovascular event, which caused symptoms that diminished his situational awareness and prompted him to abort the takeoff, resulting in a runway excursion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22LA414
- Event ID
- 20220913105928
- Case number
- ERA22LA414
- 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: d2e9cee902993f0e490661c64cdb4129c9e37252999dce18972ed9abd962e5df; retrieved 2026-09-16T16:00:40.971Z.