SEA96LA059 · Piper PA-23-150
Piper PA-23-150 · Accident: on ground/water collision with object during landing
From McKenna, WA to Thompson Airport (WA61)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA96LA059
- 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
Piper PA-23-150
- 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
- N2237P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From McKenna, WATo Thompson Airport (WA61)
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- On ground/water collision with object
- 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 › All available runway, not used
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot attempted a landing on a wet, 1,600-foot-long runway. Performance charts from an owner's manual for the aircraft type indicated a nominal landing distance of approximately 600 to 680 feet depending on gross weight. The pilot stated that the aircraft 'continued at [the] same speed with little or no slowing' upon application of wheel brakes, and that 'as [the] end of [the] runway...approached [he] could not see what lay past [the] end of [the] runway.' The pilot stated that he then 'exited [the] paved runway onto grass with hopes of slowing [and] stopping [the aircraft] over a greater distance.' After the pilot departed the pavement, the aircraft went over an embankment after slowing to approximately 10 MPH and collided with trees. Aerial imagery of the airport in a state airport directory and photos taken by on-scene investigators showed a 600-foot-long overrun area beyond the end of the runway; however, the overrun was not visible from the runway due to the slope of the terrain.
Probable cause
failure of the pilot to use all available runway, including the overrun area, to stop the airplane. Factors relating to the accident were: the wet runway, and the pilot's inability to see the overrun from the runway due to the sloping terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA96LA059
- Event ID
- 20001208X05328
- Case number
- SEA96LA059
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1996-02-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 279978ef1cd42624f38db01b1dd996de8e0eadebeb4009fb0ad09aeb037610de; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:48:36.550Z.