SEA94FA168 · Piper PA-23-250
Piper PA-23-250 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From an unrecorded airport to Burley Municipal Airport (BYI)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA94FA168
- 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
- 1 · 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
Piper PA-23-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-23
- 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
- N5919Y
- Operator
- Pope, Blaine K. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Burley Municipal Airport (BYI), Burley, 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
- Initial climb
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Diverted attention
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
WITNESSES REPORTED THAT THE PILOT ABORTED THE FIRST TAKEOFF DURING THE GROUND RUN DUE TO A LOSS OF POWER TO THE LEFT ENGINE. THE PILOT RETURNED AND COMPLETED A RUN-UP, THEN TOOK OFF AGAIN. AFTER THE AIRPLANE LIFTED OFF, IT BANKED RIGHT AND LEFT SEVERAL TIMES. EACH TIME THE AIRPLANE BANKED RIGHT, THE CABIN DOOR CAME OPEN. THE PILOT CONTINUED THE TAKEOFF AND ATTAINED AN ALTITUDE OF 300 FEET WHEN THE AIRPLANE SUDDENLY AND STEEPLY TURNED LEFT AND DESCENDED TO THE LEVEL OPEN TERRAIN. THE RIGHT SIDE CABIN DOOR LOCKING MECHANISM WAS FOUND IN THE UNLOCKED POSITION, WITH THE LOCKING PINS RETRACTED. A FUEL MANIFOLD VALVE DIAPHRAGM ON THE LEFT ENGINE WAS FOUND TORN.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S DIVERSION OF HIS ATTENTION OF CONTROLLING THE AIRPLANE WHICH LED TO HIS FAILURE TO MAINTAIN ADEQUATE AIRSPEED. A FACTOR WHICH CONTRIBUTED TO THE ACCIDENT WAS THE PILOT'S FAILURE TO ASSURE THAT THE CABIN DOOR WAS CLOSED AND LOCKED.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA94FA168
- Event ID
- 20001206X01860
- Case number
- SEA94FA168
- 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: cfbe662e545ee9e179f17a516c17b71ff08f1c490eab108e160698e098b05e91; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:05:20.965Z.