SEA97LA098 · Piper PA-46-310P
Piper PA-46-310P · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Bolinder Field Tooele Valley Airport (TVY) to Dawei Airport (TVY)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA97LA098
- 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-46-310P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-46
- 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
- N977RA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bolinder Field Tooele Valley Airport (TVY), UTTo Dawei Airport (TVY)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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 obtained/maintained
- Pilot in command › Rotation, excessive
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Tooele, UT, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
During a flight review, the instructor pilot (CFI) noted that the private pilot had applied nose-up elevator trim during the initial roll to assist in rotation for a practice short field takeoff. The CFI said that after brake release, the airplane accelerated normally with rotation initiated at approximately 70 knots. The airplane was over-rotated. Just after becaming airborne, it entered a semi-stalled condition, and the left wing dropped and made contact with the runway. Right rudder was applied from the right side of the cockpit, resulting in the wings leveling, but the aircraft's path had changed to about 30 degrees left of the original runway heading. With the attitude still nose high and observing what appeared to be obstacles in the resultant path, the throttle was reduced to idle. Impact with the ground was immediate, and both the nose gear and the right main gear collapsed. The aircraft skidded and came to rest perpendicular to the original takeoff heading.
Probable cause
the pilot's excessive rotation of the aircraft during takeoff, and his failure to obtain/maintain adequate airspeed. Inadequate supervision by the instructor pilot (CFI/check pilot) was a related factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA97LA098
- Event ID
- 20001208X08015
- Case number
- SEA97LA098
- 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: b2e80e1926ba07314d3867e53587850f166cac49d8d20a23b19263a0e1ed0e42; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:47:45.333Z.