SEA97LA081 · North American NA-265-40
Southwest Jet North American NA-265-40 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From GVW · Kansas City, MO to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA97LA081
- 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
North American NA-265-40
- Aircraft type
- North American NA-265
- 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
- N123CD
- Operator
- Southwest Jet
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From GVW · Kansas City, MOTo 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 · 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
- Loss of control on ground/water
- 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
- Electrical system › Shorted
- Landing gear, steering system › Malfunction
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that during the landing roll, the thrust reversers were deployed, and the airplane began to slowly veer to the left. The pilot applied rudder control to correct the situation; however, the airplane continued to the left. The pilot stated that he then applied hard right braking action. When the airplane slowed to below 60 knots, the pilot centered the rudder and tried twice to engage the nosewheel steering and then the standby steering system. Neither system seemed to engage, and the airplane continued off the side of the runway and collided with a runway marker and a snowbank. The nose gear collapsed, and the airplane came to rest off the runway. Postaccident investigation of the electrical system revealed a short to the command potentiometer, which affected the primary and standby nosewheel steering systems.
Probable cause
an electrical short in the electrical system, which resulted in a malfunction of the nosewheel steering system and loss of directional control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA97LA081
- Event ID
- 20001208X07636
- Case number
- SEA97LA081
- 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: 03dde2f5ca268fd4d6c224351dc3c0e57bd48009641afc45ee3df41ca984ed6f; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:11:32.887Z.