WPR25FA079 · Piper PA-24-250
Piper PA-24-250 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Southwest Wyoming Regional Airport (RKS) to Apple Valley Airport (APV)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's damage. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR25FA079
- 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
- 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
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-24-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N6502P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Southwest Wyoming Regional Airport (RKS), Rock Springs, WYTo Apple Valley Airport (APV), Apple Valley, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 66 years (built 1959)
- 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
- 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
- Unknown Narrative disagrees
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On January 14, 2025, about 0622 mountain standard time, a Piper PA-24-250, N6502P, was destroyed when it was involved in an accident near Rock Springs, Wyoming. The pilot was fatally injured. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight. The airplane departed Southwest Wyoming Regional Airport (RKS), Rock Springs, Wyoming, on a cross-country flight, with a destination of Apple Valley Airport (APV), Apple Valley, California, where the pilot was going for work. An alert notice (ALNOT) was issued when the pilot did not reach their intended destination. The wreckage was located the following day by local law enforcement. Review of preliminary ADS-B data showed that the airplane departed from RKS to the southwest and climbed to 10,175 ft mean sea level (msl). The airplane maintained this altitude on a southwesterly heading for about 11 minutes. Subsequently, the airplane made a descending 180° left turn to 8,400 ft msl, followed by a right climbing turn to about 9,000 ft msl before descending again to 8,400 ft msl on a southernly heading at the end of the flight track. The accident site was located about 1/4 miles south of the last data point of the flight track.
Figure 1-ADS-B Flight track and accident site (illustrated). The accident site was located in a remote mountainous area at an elevation of approximately 8,450 ft msl. Examination of the accident site revealed the first identified point of impact was a group of damaged trees. The debris field extended from the first identified point of impact on a heading of about 246° magnetic for about 240 ft. All major structural components and other fragments of the airplane were spread throughout the debris field. The airplane wreckage will be retained for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR25FA079
- Event ID
- 20250115199550
- Case number
- WPR25FA079
- 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. 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: cf2301fe1f8c46179fff444cb8573a1a4daf64c94697c94140c2bbd5549b3cba; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:01:42.697Z.