CEN23LA119 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) during initial climb
From an unrecorded airport to Hendricks County Gordon Graham Field (2R2)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23LA119
- 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-28-140
- 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
- N1700T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Hendricks County Gordon Graham Field (2R2), Danville, IN
- Aircraft age
- About 53 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT)
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot attempted a short field takeoff from a grass airstrip at the time of the accident. During the airplane’s takeoff roll, the passenger, who was seated in the left pilot seat, said that the windsock was “inconsistent.” At an airplane speed of 45-50 mph, the pilot applied control back pressure to ease the airplane into ground effect. The airplane became airborne but quickly settled back onto the runway and became airborne again. The airplane airspeed did not increase and remained at 40 mph. The pilot asked the passenger to continue to read the airspeed indications as the pilot realized that they were running out of remaining runway. The pilot reduced some of the control back pressure and pushed the airplane nose down out of fear of an aerodynamic stall and in hopes of increasing airspeed. The airplane descended and impacted the ground about 100 yds south of the departure runway and nosed over. The airplane sustained substantial damage that included damage to the right wing, aileron, and empennage. The pilot stated there was no mechanical malfunction or failure of the airplane that would have precluded normal operations. Recorded weather observations, north and northeast and 15-16 nm from the airport, indicated a quartering tailwind relative to the runway direction prevailed at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate weather evaluation and failure to abort the takeoff that resulted in an impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23LA119
- Event ID
- 20230223106770
- Case number
- CEN23LA119
- 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: 9c969e6c819eefa835b52f7756743ef5693dfb4288c661ef92cb6fa80f5c1d3b; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:22:08.738Z.