ERA23LA296 · Piper PA-28-181
Freeflight Aviation Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Flying W Airport (N14) to Flying W Airport (N14)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA296
- 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-28-181
- 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
- N8126X
- Operator
- Freeflight Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Flying W Airport (N14), Lumberton, NJTo Flying W Airport (N14), Lumberton, NJ
- Aircraft age
- About 44 years (built 1979)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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 control in flight
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a simulated soft field take off from a paved runway the student pilot followed the procedure of holding control wheel back pressure while accelerating for takeoff. The airplane began to lift off the runway into ground effect with an excessive nose high attitude and began drifting to left of center line. Upon realizing the airplane was in an imminent stall due to the high angle attack and veering away from the runway centerline, the flight instructor took over control of the airplane, but the airplane had already drifted over the grassy area off the left side of the runway. During the subsequent runway excursion, the right side of the horizontal stabilator struck two of the runway edge lights and incurred substantial damage. Neither the flight instructor, nor the student pilot, heard the impact and continued their flight lesson. The damage was discovered after they completed the lesson. Following the accident, the flight instructor stated that he should have been more proactive in either taking control, or ensuring the student was relaxing the back pressure on the control wheel as they started gaining speed to help get the airplane in to ground effect for the simulated soft field departure.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s improper flight control inputs and the flight instructor’s delayed remedial action during takeoff, which resulted in a runway excursion and impact with the runway edge lights.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA296
- Event ID
- 20230712192615
- Case number
- ERA23LA296
- 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: 03f8e4c40eb2d1468e2933d99b626accebbaa36b9010052a3b8098cd5d35e73d; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:51:12.775Z.