CEN26LA170 · Piper PA 31P 350
Twin Star Montana Piper PA 31P 350 · Accident: runway excursion during landing
From Memorial Field Airport (HOT) to Gainesville Municipal Airport (GLE)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN26LA170
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA 31P 350
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-31
- 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
- N9262Y
- Operator
- Twin Star Montana
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Memorial Field Airport (HOT), Hot Springs, ARTo Gainesville Municipal Airport (GLE), Gainesville, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 42 years (built 1984)
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Runway excursion
- 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
- 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 proceeded to his intended destination under visual flight rules while receiving flight following services from air traffic control. As he neared the destination airport, the pilot observed an opening in the underlying cloud layer. As he descended the airplane below the cloud layer, the pilot realized that he was over a different airport located about 29 miles north of his intended destination. The flight was experiencing turbulence, so the pilot decided it would be prudent to land. His initial approach was high so he executed a go-around. On the second landing approach to runway 35, the airplane touched down normally but as it rolled past mid-field, it did not slow down. The airplane subsequently exited the end of the runway pavement and encountered a steep drop off and a wire fence. The airplane sustained damage to the forward fuselage, right engine mount and nacelle, and left outboard wing. The pilot stated that there were no failures or malfunctions associated with the airplane before the accident. He reported the runway was wet due to some light rain and drizzle at the time. The airport surface observation, taken about 8 minutes before the accident, reported a south wind from 160° gusting to 20 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain control of the airplane while landing on a wet runway with a tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN26LA170
- Event ID
- 20260420202850
- Case number
- CEN26LA170
- 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: cf1fbdb1f9b53e73a96517fa3d5f4cae1f151754b63cfd7f66a288fedce54bc0; retrieved 2026-09-16T21:17:12.784Z.