SEA98LA043 · Piper PA-38-112
Piper PA-38-112 · Accident: dragged wing, rotor, pod, float or tail/skid on approach
From U11 · Rexburg, ID to an unrecorded destination
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA98LA043
- 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-38-112
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-38
- 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
- N2438L
- Operator
- Perham, John, J. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From U11 · Rexburg, IDTo 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- Dragged wing, rotor, pod, float or tail/skid
- 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
- Landing gear, nose gear › Overload
- Pilot in command › Altitude/clearance, misjudged
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot had reviewed the intended route of flight, including the Dubois airport, previous to departing Rexburg on his cross country solo. After landing first at Pocatello, and then Arco, he proceeded to Dubois where he found the airport and its single runway (16/34) snow covered. The Airport/Facility Directory effective at the time of the accident advised the reader that 'no winter maintenance' was available and the informational diagram of the Dubois airport (which was Xeroxed on the back side of the student's flight planner log for the accident trip) advised that the 'airport is closed from November to April because of snow.' The student 'decided to do a fly-by (as a missed landing) about 20'-15' above the runway' and reported that when he 'got to the transition point (he) applied full power and pulled the yoke back. Almost instantly, as the plane rotated, (he) felt drag as a wheel caught in the snow.' As the aircraft decelerated, rolling through the snow, the nose gear collapsed.
Probable cause
The student pilot's misjudgment of altitude/clearance and overloading of the nose gear. A contributing factor was the snow-covered turf runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA98LA043
- Event ID
- 20001211X09778
- Case number
- SEA98LA043
- 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: 30c07eefa6befcf0cfe49fc8e1bdcef00179b574b449332a1df69952b2449c1b; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:59:31.580Z.