ERA23FA270 · Piper PA-30
Piper PA-30 · Accident: loss of visual reference during initial climb
From an unrecorded airport to Ocean City Municipal Airport (OXB)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23FA270
- 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
- 2 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-30
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-30
- 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
- N7628Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Ocean City Municipal Airport (OXB), Ocean City, MD
- Aircraft age
- About 59 years (built 1964)
- 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
- Loss of visual reference
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed from an non-towered airport before sunrise with an instrument flight rules (IFR) flight plan on file. Track data revealed that the airplane entered a climbing, left turn after takeoff, reaching an altitude about 1,500 ft above the ground. The airplane remained in the left turn for about 360°. An examination of tree strikes at the accident site revealed that the airplane was at a left bank angle of about 55° and a descent angle of about 30° at impact. The airplane impacted trees and terrain about 2 miles south of the departure airport. The wreckage was highly fragmented, indicative of a high-energy impact with the ground.
Postaccident examination of the airframe, engines, and propellers did not reveal evidence of a pre-existing mechanical malfunction or anomaly that would have precluded normal operation.
One of the pilot’s toxicology specimens tested positive for ethanol; however, whether the pilot had consumed alcohol or was experiencing any associated impairing effects at the time of the crash could not be determined based on the limited toxicological evidence.
Although the departure airport did not have a weather reporting capability, a nearby airport reported low instrument meteorological conditions and the pilot likely encountered these instrument conditions shortly after takeoff. While the pilot had logged thirteen practice instrument approaches in the six months before the accident, he had logged no actual instrument time in the eight months before the accident. Based on the weather conditions, the dark lighting conditions, and the wreckage distribution, which was consistent with a high-speed impact, it is likely that the pilot experienced spatial disorientation and lost airplane control after taking off.
Probable cause
The pilot’s spatial disorientation and subsequent loss of airplane control, which resulted in an uncontrolled descent and collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23FA270
- Event ID
- 20230618192389
- Case number
- ERA23FA270
- 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: efddf5b93a4d0b70fd0c04f37e5fb208ce0c20a9b4861e8058c399af5cddd973; retrieved 2026-09-15T08:01:30.080Z.