ERA23LA111 · Piper PA-28-160
First Team Pilot Training Piper PA-28-160 · Accident on approach
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA111
- 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 PA-28-160
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N5841W
- Operator
- First Team Pilot Training
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 58 years (built 1965)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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
Cause areas
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During an instructional flight, while flying on the left downwind leg of the traffic pattern at an altitude of about 1,000 ft above the ground, the flight instructor and the student pilot heard a momentary grinding noise of what sounded like "metal on metal." The flight instructor described that the noise lasted no more than 2 to 3 seconds and immediately abated. The flight instructor and student did not see anything approaching the airplane or its flight path before the noise occurred, nor did they report any sensation similar to an impact. The flight instructor and student pilot subsequently landed the airplane without issue and during a postflight inspection with the airplane’s owner, the flight instructor noted damage to the right side of the engine cowling and substantial damage to the inboard aft face of one of the propellor blades. There were no visible blood or bird remains present on the propeller or cowling. The flight instructor and airplane owner postulated that the airplane may have impacted an unmanned aerial system (UAS), and the airplane owner subsequently coordinated a ground search for debris in the days following the accident; however, no UAS components was located. Review of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) records revealed that no Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability authorizations were requested for the area at the time of the accident, nor had any UAS operational waivers had been filed with the FAA for operation in the area at the time of the accident. Given all available information, the reason that the airplane’s engine cowling and propeller were damaged during the flight could not be definitively determined.
Probable cause
Based on available evidence, the reason for the damage to the airplane’s propeller and engine cowling could not be determined.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA111
- Event ID
- 20230117106583
- Case number
- ERA23LA111
- 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: bea8fa5659678a724944d197625dd53a3ae03e259b8be8e8ea7b696c75de914e; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:14:54.264Z.