CEN26LA266 · Piper J3C-65
Piper J3C-65 · Accident
From Covey Trails Airport (X09) to Covey Trails Airport (X09)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN26LA266
- 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 J3C-65
- Aircraft type
- Piper J3
- 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
- N92432
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Covey Trails Airport (X09), Richmond, TXTo Covey Trails Airport (X09), RIchmond, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 80 years (built 1946)
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On July 20, 2026, at 0643 central daylight time, a Piper J3C-65 airplane, N92432, sustained substantial damage when it was involved in an accident near Richmond, Texas. The commercial pilot sustained serious injuries. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight. The airplane impacted the roof of a house near the airport traffic pattern for Covey Trails Airport, Richmond, Texas. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and wings. The pilot stated that he did not remember the circumstances leading to and nature of the accident. Postaccident examination of the airplane confirmed flight control continuity from the cockpit flight controls to the respective flight control surfaces. The two-blade wood propeller and metal propeller spinner did not display torsional features consistent with engine power. The airplane was retained for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN26LA266
- Event ID
- 20260724203452
- Case number
- CEN26LA266
- 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. 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: 8bda05d66fefeba943e85b3304545de5f9fb9f807f1f55bd9af878216397184a; retrieved 2026-09-17T05:20:12.407Z.