ERA23LA364 · Piper PA24 400
Piper PA24 400 · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) on approach
From Nantucket Memorial Airport (ACK) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA364
- 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 PA24 400
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA24
- 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
- N400RW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Nantucket Memorial Airport (ACK), Nantucket, MATo not recorded
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot and passenger proceeded on the cross-country nigh flight and on arrival near the destination airport the pilot stated that he was instructed by air traffic control to descend through class B airspace on a straight-in approach to the runway, which required him to descend at a rate of about 1,000 ft-per-minute. While flying the straight-in approach he indicated that he was, “a little behind on the aircraft as we descended.” With the lights and the runway in sight he descended too quickly on final approach and impacted airport approach lighting then the ground short of the runway, resulting in substantial damage to the right wing. The pilot stated that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures of the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to fly an appropriate glide path during the landing approach, which resulted in a collision with approach lights and the ground short of the intended runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA364
- Event ID
- 20230907193025
- Case number
- ERA23LA364
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2023-09-07.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 96447407769359cb1c5311e47e30650345118c9721487202500900b5f217e5fa; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:06:00.986Z.