WPR25LA236 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: part(s) separation from aircraft en route
From Dayton Valley Airpark (A34) to Silver Springs Airport (SPZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR25LA236
- 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-28-180
- 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
- N8359W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dayton Valley Airpark (A34), Dayton, NVTo Silver Springs Airport (SPZ), Silver Springs, NV
- Aircraft age
- About 60 years (built 1965)
- 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
- Part(s) separation from aircraft
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On August 3, 2025, at about 0730 Pacific daylight time, a Piper PA28-180, N8359W, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Stagecoach, Nevada. The student pilot was not injured. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 instructional flight.
The pilot departed Silver Springs Airport (SPZ) earlier in the morning for the solo flight. After completing 3 uneventful takeoffs and landings at Dayton Valley Airpark (A34), he began the return leg to Silver Springs. About 10 minutes after departure, at an altitude of about 7,500 ft msl (3,200 ft agl), the pilot experienced a loud bang followed by heavy airframe vibration. The engine was shaking violently and then lost all power. He could see a propeller was blade missing, so he prepared for an emergency landing by shutting off the fuel and trimming the airplane for best glide airspeed. He then set the transponder to 7700 and declared an emergency on the Dayton Valley and Silver Springs common traffic advisory frequency.
The pilot chose a highway for landing, and the touchdown was uneventful. During the landing roll it became apparent that the rudder pedal system had been damaged, so the pilot was unable to maintain directional control, and the airplane struck a median curb. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the engine mount during the accident sequence.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR25LA236
- Event ID
- 20250805200704
- Case number
- WPR25LA236
- 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: df510c1044c42224387fc3bd78f67af6d8861dd6b322b6be9bad661611764789; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:10:24.822Z.