ERA25LA130 · Piper PA-28-235
Piper PA-28-235 · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC en route
From Martin State Airport (MTN) to Rutland - Southern Vermont Regional Airport (RUT)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's injuries. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA25LA130
- 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
- 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-28-235
- 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
- N43DN
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Martin State Airport (MTN), Baltimore, MDTo Rutland - Southern Vermont Regional Airport (RUT), Rutland, VT
- Aircraft age
- About 53 years (built 1972)
- 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
- VFR encounter with IMC
- 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
- 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, who did not hold an instrument rating, reported that while enroute on the cross-country flight under visual flight rules (VFR), he altered his course around building clouds. He continued to monitor the weather conditions at local airports along the planned route and was aware that they were near the VFR minimums, but he elected to continue the flight. While approaching a valley, the pilot stated that he saw a break in the clouds, so he attempted to descend to get below the cloud level. Shortly after, the pilot noticed that the weather was changing rapidly and felt that attempting to remain under the clouds would not be “legal nor safe” and he began to climb. During the climb, the airplane entered clouds, and the pilot immediately noticed water droplets forming on the airplane and freezing. The pilot applied carburetor heat and felt an associated decrease in power as he continued with the climb. While attempting to maneuver out of the clouds, the pilot-rated passenger noted that the airspeed was decreasing, and that the ice accumulating on the airframe was increasing. Shortly after, the airplane encountered an aerodynamic stall. The pilot was able to gain enough airspeed to recover, but when the pilot then attempted to climb again, and the airplane stalled for a second time. The airplane eventually entered a spin that the pilot was able to recover from. At this point, the pilot noticed trees and a “cliff” that he was attempting to direct the airplane away from, but the airspeed was decreasing. The pilot then attempted to hold the airplane away from stalling as long as possible to force a landing through trees. The airplane subsequently stalled and collided with a series of trees. The airplane’s wings separated from the fuselage during the impact sequence and the fuselage came to rest on the side of a mountain in about 4 ft of snow. The pilot and both passengers incurred minor injuries and the airplane was substantially damaged during the impact. The pilot stated that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper decision to continue the visual flight rules flight into instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in the accumulation of airframe icing and a subsequent aerodynamic stall/spin.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA25LA130
- Event ID
- 20250226199769
- Case number
- ERA25LA130
- 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: 8fbc940034f41beaeea1ed0cda1e4b5beaafb62f8f8772dbca74054581c40c36; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:41:46.552Z.