SEA96FA137 · Piper PA-28R-180
Piper PA-28R-180 · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA96FA137
- 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
- 2 · 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-28R-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N7529J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC), Salt Lake City, UTTo not recorded
- 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 · aborted
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not obtained/maintained
- Pilot in command › Go-around, delayed
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot initiated a landing on a 6,000 by 30 foot paved airstrip. Both edges of the airstrip dropped off into drainage ditches immediately beyond the edges of the pavement. There was a crosswind from the right, which was variable and gusty. The density altitude was over 7,300 feet. Witnesses stated the aircraft touched down two to three times during the landing, and the pilot appeared to have difficulty maintaining a straight path on the pavement. A photo showed the aircraft's right main gear at the edge of the pavement as it approached the end of the landing area. The witnesses said that close to the end of the landing area, the aircraft became airborne again, climbed about 20 to 75 feet above ground level, and started a left turn. The aircraft's left wing then dropped, and the aircraft crashed. The airstrip had a 60 to 80 foot high ridge along its west edge for its entire length, and there was a 361 foot hill about 1/3 mile beyond the end of the airstrip with higher mountainous terrain beyond the hill. Flap system components were found in the up position at the accident site; the aircraft's flaps-up/gear-up stall speed was 71 MPH at 20 degrees bank and 79 MPH at 40 degrees bank. No preimpact mechanical failure or malfunction of the aircraft or engine was found. About 18 miles north at Livingston, MT, the 1249 mdt wind was from 220 degrees at 18 gusting 27 knots.
Probable cause
the pilot's delay in initiating a go-around, and his failure to obtain and/or maintain sufficient airspeed to avoid higher terrain during the go-around, which resulted in a stall and collision with terrain. Factors relating to the accident were: the narrow landing area, variable/gusty crosswind conditions, the resultant lack of directional control during the landing, high density altitude, and mountainous/hilly terrain beyond the end of the airstrip.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA96FA137
- Event ID
- 20001208X06100
- Case number
- SEA96FA137
- 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: 4f3e6e3d6883a06e9e6071e0186fdbc9c43196b72e512e09dc516ed20cf7956b; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:18:19.060Z.