New England Airlines Piper PA-32-300 accident
Piper PA-32-300 · Accident en route
From Martha's Vineyard Airport (MVY) to Montauk Airport (MTP)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA354
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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-32-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N405WB
- Operator
- New England Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From Martha's Vineyard Airport (MVY), Marthas Vinyard, MATo Montauk Airport (MTP), Montauk, NY
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1975)
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Not determined › Not determined
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 40 minutes into the flight, while operating at 4,500 ft mean sea level (msl), the engine began to run “rough” and suddenly stopped producing power. The pilot immediately turned to a nearby airport that was only a few miles away. The propeller continued to windmill, but after troubleshooting he was unable to restart the engine; he began a left, spiraling descent to the runway. He misjudged the winds, and his speed and altitude were insufficient to land safely on the runway. He performed a forced landing short of the runway in dense brush, which resulted in substantial damage to the airframe. Postaccident examination of the engine and associated systems revealed no preimpact malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation and the reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined. Contributing was the pilot’s misjudgment of airspeed and altitude during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA354
- Event ID
- 20230830192966
- Case number
- ERA23LA354
- 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: 7b08f3e1ae4ff2f361290f8d74b1d79fb2fd778e8cb41ce171352e124f841715; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:03:50.660Z.