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CEN23LA213 · Piper PA-28-235

20 May 2023 · Ray, MI, United States

Kareon Consulting Piper PA-28-235 · Accident: hard landing

From Coleman A. Young Municipal Airport (KDET) to Ray Community Airport (57D)

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Event

NTSB case
CEN23LA213
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-28-235

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
N586SB
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Coleman A. Young Municipal Airport (KDET), Detroit, MITo Ray Community Airport (57D), Ray, MI
Aircraft age
About 57 years (built 1966)
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 · flare/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
Hard landing
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
  • Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
  • Personnel issues › Action/decision
  • 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 flight instructor demonstrated a simulated engine failure to his student while the airplane was on the crosswind leg in the traffic pattern. He reported that he attempted to land on the opposite runway from which they departed. He reported that while maneuvering to final approach the airplane was pushed to the left of the runway over a grassy area by a “sudden downward draft.” The flight instructor stated that he thought the airplane encountered “windshear coming down between the trees.” He landed the airplane in the wet grass between the taxiway and the runway, which resulted in a propeller strike. Post-accident examination revealed substantial damage to the engine mount. The flight instructor reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. The flight instructor reported that the wind at the time of the accident was 300° at 10 knots. The landing was made toward runway 10 which resulted in a 9-knot tailwind.

Probable cause

The flight instructor’s failure to maintain airplane control during simulated engine-out procedures. Contributing to the accident was the flight instructor’s decision to land with a tailwind.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record CEN23LA213
Event ID
20230601192280
Case number
CEN23LA213
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: dd1e7109b0b33d14f86fcb6f2161677d4edd559fa4ffa2215250f85f0b659972; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:40:14.254Z.