CEN25LA218 · Piper PA-36-375
Dakota Air Spray Piper PA-36-375 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Huron Regional Airport (HON) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN25LA218
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-36-375
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-36
- 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
- N6174A
- Operator
- Dakota Air Spray
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Huron Regional Airport (HON), Huron, SDTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 44 years (built 1981)
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that she was practicing a low-level aerial application flight of applying water to a field. During the third pass, she pushed the spray lever forward and inadvertently pushed the dump lever with her knuckles, which opened the gate to the hopper. She closed the gate and continued spraying, then climbed out of the field. The airplane entered an aerodynamic stall during the climb and the pilot applied full power; however, the airplane continued to stall at a low altitude and landed hard in a field. The airplane came to rest upright and sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and both wings. The pilot reported there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airframe or the engine that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot reported the airplane was equipped with a stall warning system. She further reported that she obtained her aerial application airplane operation logbook endorsement 36 days before the accident date.
Probable cause
The pilot’s exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack during a low-level aerial application, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and loss of airplane control at too low of an altitude to recover.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN25LA218
- Event ID
- 20250623200377
- Case number
- CEN25LA218
- 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: 10a11b1f45c81002080c1d6d69a37f38ae7ea663b443d8cb7d116c1624a5958e; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:59:45.151Z.