CEN24FA327 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) en route
From Karl Stefan Memorial Airport (OFK) to Buffalo Municipal Airport (CFE)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN24FA327
- 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
- Ongoing
- 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
- Not recorded
Piper PA-28-140
- 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
- N9626K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Karl Stefan Memorial Airport (OFK), Norfolk, NETo Buffalo Municipal Airport (CFE), Buffalo, MN
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1976)
- 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
- En route
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On August 26, 2024, about 0931 central daylight time, a Piper PA28-140, N9626K, was destroyed when it was involved in an accident near Wayne, Nebraska. The private pilot was fatally injured. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight.
The flight originated from Norfolk Regional Airport (OFK), Norfolk, Nebraska, and departed to the northeast, presumably to return to Buffalo, Minnesota. The airplane had been hangered as a transient at OFK for the weekend. The FBO manager stated that the airplane was refueled by the pilot at the self-service fuel pump prior to departure but he did not observe the pilot check the weather at the FBO.
The pilot rated landowner, whose property the airplane impacted, stated the clouds were at about 100 ft above the ground when he initially heard the airplane fly by. Several minutes later he heard the airplane at a very high rpm followed by a loud “pop” and silence afterwards. A black plume of smoke appeared, and he eventually located the airplane in his cornfield.
Examination of the airframe, engine and propeller at the accident site did not reveal any pre-impact anomalies. An SD card was recovered from a Honeywell AV8OR personal navigator and was retained for data download.
The FBO manager stated weather at OFK at the time of departure of the accident airplane was mostly clear skies with 10+ miles of visibility. A surface observation taken about 7 nautical miles southeast of the accident site recorded ceilings at 600 ft agl near the time of the accident. A preliminary review of weather radar for the time and place of the accident showed a band of precipitation moving across the area. Flight track data showed the airplane traveling below 1,000 ft agl.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN24FA327
- Event ID
- 20240826195002
- Case number
- CEN24FA327
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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. 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: 001e1cd06fb6e8642e87d9b849b99fe48060248e2b28a653afdb88f6f41b285d; retrieved 2026-09-15T08:56:54.696Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: damage. The preliminary narrative states the Piper PA-28-140 was destroyed when it impacted a cornfield, followed by a black plume of smoke.