SEA99LA047 · Aviat A-1
Aviat A-1 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (BOI) to Emmett Municipal Airport (S78)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA99LA047
- 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
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
Aviat A-1
- Aircraft type
- Aviat A-1
- 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
- N345HU
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (BOI), Boise, IDTo Emmett Municipal Airport (S78), Emmett, ID
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Maneuvering
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Before radar contact with the aircraft was lost, approach control radar tracked the aircraft descending to an altitude of 300 feet above ground level or less. As the aircraft was being flown at low altitude, one of the aircraft occupants spotted a coyote. The pilot reported he then initiated a 270-degree turn to get a better view of the coyote, and that as the aircraft rolled out of the 270-degree turn, the aircraft experienced a high rate of descent, which addition of power and raising the nose failed to arrest. The passenger reported that as soon as the coyote was called out, the pilot immediately rolled into a steep turn, and that the next thing he remembered was ground impact. The pilot reported that no mechanical malfunction was involved, and FAA inspectors found no evidence of mechanical problems in the wreckage. Weather reports and forecasts for the area disclosed no indications of high winds or turbulence during the time frame of the accident flight.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control during a low-altitude maneuver to view a coyote on the ground. A related factor was the pilot's low altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA99LA047
- Event ID
- 20001205X00561
- Case number
- SEA99LA047
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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: d82dcfaf01f21120a2158b364eb4222dce076cad7c3465f29b5cf72174fc975c; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:09:56.386Z.