SEA97FA006 · Piper PA-34-200T
Piper PA-34-200T · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Spokane International Airport (GEG) to King County International Airport - Boeing Field (BFI)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA97FA006
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Unknown
Piper PA-34-200T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-34
- 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
- N666HL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Spokane International Airport (GEG), Spokane, WATo King County International Airport - Boeing Field (BFI), Seattle, WA
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Pilot in command › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
- Pilot in command › Improper decision
- Pilot in command › Physical impairment
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot went to a doctor 6 hours before reporting to fly, and was diagnosed with gastritis, reflux symptoms, and fatigue. Just before taking off on the accident flight, the pilot complained to a fellow company pilot that he felt ill, expressing fear of repercussions from his company if he grounded himself. A few minutes before disappearing from contact with air traffic control, he radioed the fellow pilot (who was in another company aircraft on the same route): 'I don't feel so good...I feel like I'm going to toss my cookies.' The aircraft wreckage was located about 11 hours after the disappearance, with the pilot fatally injured inside. Wreckage distribution at the accident site was indicative of inflight separation of the right wing and horizontal stabilator. Subsequent examination indicated that the wing and stabilator separations were a result of overstress. No evidence of mechanical problems was noted, other than the separated wing and stabilator. In constructing a history of the pilot's activities before the accident, investigators found that his activities for the two days before the accident (during a rest period) were on a schedule inconsistent with his night air cargo duties.
Probable cause
The pilot's physical impairment of judgment and performance, his decision to fly while impaired, and his subsequent failure to maintain control of the aircraft which led to the aircraft's design stress limits being exceeded and inflight separation of the horizontal stabiliator and right wing. Contributing to the accident were: pilot fatigue and self-induced pressure to fly.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA97FA006
- Event ID
- 20001208X06969
- Case number
- SEA97FA006
- 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: fd2e66b53e5d0ed85ac580396a78fb90a41590ed69100b0d26c629203f9876aa; retrieved 2026-09-18T13:35:36.453Z.