ERA23FA313 · Piper PA28R 200
Piper PA28R 200 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23FA313
- 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
- 1 · 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 PA28R 200
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N34PT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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
- 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 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot told a mechanic that he was planning to remain in the airport traffic pattern to make sure the airplane was ready for a long cross-country flight the next morning. An earwitness reported hearing the airplane begin its takeoff roll and continued to hear engine noises for a total of about 45 seconds until the airplane impacted the ground. The one eyewitness described the airplane as being in a steep left turn with the wings perpendicular to the ground just before it impacted the terrain. The accident occurred on the first flight after having a new interior and propeller installed, and after the completion of an annual inspection. Postaccident examination of the airplane and engine revealed no evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The ground impact scars at the accident site, compact distribution of wreckage, and the eyewitness statement were consistent with the airplane entering an aerodynamic stall and left rotating spin in the left crosswind segment of the traffic pattern. At impact, the landing gear were selected to the down position and the flaps were set to the full position, which was not consistent with the with the configurations in the airframe manufacturer’s operating manual for either normal or short-field takeoff procedures. It is possible that this configuration, particularly the fully extended flaps, degraded the airplane’s climb performance and contributed to the aerodynamic stall.
Probable cause
The pilot’s exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack during initial climb, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall/spin and loss of control that the pilot did not recover from.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23FA313
- Event ID
- 20230726192711
- Case number
- ERA23FA313
- 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: e31b8c7e78d88b02238131c37a18748936f7c5197b956296ab39c1ea6e0de6e9; retrieved 2026-09-15T08:03:31.287Z.