CEN25LA400 · Piper PA-34-200
Piper PA-34-200 · Accident on approach
From Ankeny Regional Airport (IKV) to Rush City Regional Airport (ROS)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN25LA400
- 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
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-34-200
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-34
- 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
- N14SS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ankeny Regional Airport (IKV), Ankeny, IATo Rush City Regional Airport (ROS), Rush City, MN
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1977)
- 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
- Approach · IFR final approach
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
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 the flight was conducted on an instrument flight rules flight plan. The initial portion of the flight was in visual meteorological conditions. However, as the flight neared the intended destination airport, the weather conditions had deteriorated and an instrument approach was required. While on the final approach segment, the airplane drifted left of course. As the pilot was correcting and looking for the runway, he did not notice the airplane had descended below the minimum descent altitude. He initiated a missed approach but was unable to avoid trees in the airplane flight path. Since the runway was not in sight, he decided to divert to a nearby airport with visual conditions. The remainder of the flight was uneventful. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right wing and stabilator from the tree impact. The pilot stated there were no failures or malfunctions related to the airplane before the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to properly monitor the airplane glide path which resulted in the inadvertent descent below the approach minimum descent altitude and the impact with trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN25LA400
- Event ID
- 20250929201745
- Case number
- CEN25LA400
- 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: 03829d2b960a579f096dbfaa2bebbbb351c53d4c18c2fc854c5ec89c1118141e; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:23:53.503Z.