NTSB Investigating Fatal Crash of Single-Engine Aircraft Near Plymouth, Massachusetts
The accident record identifies the aircraft as N84AJ, a PA-18 LLC AC-18-CUB, with one person aboard and one fatality; the cause has not been determined.
More on this incident
Was this report accurate and useful?
Reference data
From aircraft and geographic registries, not from the news sources. Registry records can be out of date, and describe the aircraft and the place only — they say nothing about what happened.
- Registration
- N84AJ
- Type
- Pa-18 Llc AC-18-CUB — single-engine piston landplane
- Engines
- LYCOMING IO-360 SERIES
- Built
- 2016-01-01 (10 years old)
- Registered owner
- Pa-18 LlcThe owner of record is not necessarily the operator, the pilot, or otherwise connected to the flight.
- Terrain elevation
- 194 ft
- Nearest aerodrome
- 2.9 miles NW of Plymouth Municipal Airport (KPYM/PYM)
Sources
Revision history
- Version 47 Aug 2026, 13:34current
Clarified that the 194 ft elevation and airport distances describe the town of Plymouth rather than the accident site, and noted the crash site location is not specified.
- Version 37 Aug 2026, 13:34current
Rewrote the headline and lead around the NTSB investigation, and clarified that the 194 ft elevation and airport distances refer to the settlement reference point rather than the accident site.
- Version 35 Aug 2026, 15:01
No new facts reported; tightened owner-background wording and attribution, no change to casualty figures or investigation status.
- Version 25 Aug 2026, 15:01
Added headline and standfirst and tightened wording; no new facts, investigation status unchanged.
- Version 25 Aug 2026, 14:52
Tightened attribution of owner-background research and investigating body; softened 'developing event' phrasing to reflect open investigation; no new facts.
- Version 15 Aug 2026, 14:51
First published.
- Version 15 Aug 2026, 14:46
First published.
How we work
This site models an investigative reporter rather than a wire desk. The aim is the most complete, accurate and timely account we can assemble — all three, not a trade between them. Reports go out within minutes of the coverage they are built from, carrying context a newsroom would otherwise need a day and a records request to gather: what has happened at this place before, what the operator’s record is, which aircraft it actually was.
Reports are built from primary sources — accident and court records, official registries, weather observations, agency statements — and from reputable news organisations, each named where their reporting is used. Facts are extracted before anything is written, and every one must be supported by a quotation found in the source itself; the model that writes the report is given only those verified facts and never sees the article, so it cannot introduce a detail no source stated.
Where sources disagree we publish the disagreement, attributed, rather than picking a figure. Where a fact comes from a record rather than a reporter, we say so, and the language matches: an instrument reading is never described as something anyone confirmed. Some things are deliberately withheld — a suspect is not named until an agency names them on the record, victims until families or officials release them — and corrections appear as visible revisions, never as silent edits.
None of that makes a report true. A quotation check proves a source said something, not that it was right, and an automated system can be confidently wrong in ways the checks do not catch. If something here is wrong, the feedback above is how it gets found. The full methodology, including what we refuse to publish.