ERA23LA245 · Piper PA-25-260
Aerial Banners North Piper PA-25-260 · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From North Perry Airport (HWO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA245
- 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
- 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-25-260
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-25
- 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
- N454AB
- Operator
- Aerial Banners North
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Perry Airport (HWO), Hollywood, FLTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 49 years (built 1974)
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Low altitude operation/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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
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 of the tailwheel-equipped banner tow airplane was unsuccessful in his first three attempted banner pickup passes. The operator’s director of ground operations then directed the pilot to pick up a different banner, after which the pilot attempted another pickup. During that attempt, the director watched as the tow hook struck one of the cones marking the banner approach lane, and did not catch the banner. The director then walked toward the cone to upright it and when he next observed the airplane it was in a descending left spin that continued to ground contact. The pilot recalled the missed pickup attempts and described that during the final pickup attempt and climb out, he felt the rudder “snap” or “let go,” after which the airplane turned left. He commented about the rudder over the radio and attempted to lower the airplane’s nose but could not recall the events that occurred thereafter. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that one of the three prongs of the steel tow hook that was used to pick up banners was bent outward and nearly straight. Additional examination of the wreckage revealed that the right side rudder control horn had fractured. No other evidence of an inflight mechanical malfunction or failure was observed during the examination. Detailed metallurgical of the fracture surfaces from the rudder horn revealed that all of the fractures displayed features consistent with overload-induced separation. Given the witness description that the tow hook had struck a cone on the ground, the pilot reported experiencing a problem with the rudder during the subsequent climb out, and the deformation observed on one of the steel tow hook prongs, it is likely that the tow hook recoiled after contacting the ground and struck the airplane. The tow hook’s impact with the airplane likely resulted in the overload fracture of the right rudder horn that resulted in the pilot’s subsequent loss of airplane control.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper banner pickup approach, which resulted in the banner tow hook contacting the airplane, and the subsequent overload separation of the right rudder control horn, resulting in a loss of airplane control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA245
- Event ID
- 20230525192237
- Case number
- ERA23LA245
- 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: 6b86f5b0e1af9489d06a1c46473ed0e7764dc6cc452c51e898ad0e59f2e8a015; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:38:31.678Z.