WPR25LA046 · Piper PA-28R-200
Gizzy Piper PA-28R-200 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during takeoff
From an unrecorded airport to Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR25LA046
- 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
- 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-28R-200
- 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
- N55641
- Operator
- Gizzy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP), Rapid City, SD
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1973)
- 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 engine power (total)
- 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
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 November 24, 2024, about 1630 mountain standard time, a Piper PA-28R-200, N55641, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Gillette, Wyoming. The pilot and passenger sustained minor injuries. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight.
The pilot stated that earlier in the day he departed from Coos Bay, Oregon for a long cross-country flight, with two planned fuel stops. After making an uneventful first fuel stop, he continued on the flight and landed in Gillette about 1540 for the second fuel stop. He filled the airplane with full fuel and departed from runway 34. The airplane lifted off the runway surface and the pilot retracted the landing gear as he passed midfield. Immediately thereafter, he smelled fuel and the engine began sputter. He initiated a right turn back to the airport, but the airplane was unable to maintain altitude. The airplane touched down in a field and collided with a fence. During the accident sequence, the airplane incurred substantial damage to the wings.
The airplane had undergone maintenance a few days before the accident. The maintenance records indicated that there was an annual inspection performed on November 22, 2024 at a total time of 6861.5 hours which equated to 5.5 flight hours before the accident.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR25LA046
- Event ID
- 20241126195550
- Case number
- WPR25LA046
- 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. 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: cc0396b536255938875f1e9538f15e5b252cc47c480fb630b6d5973ba0218a04; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:30:15.556Z.