SEA98LA085 · Piper PA-30
Piper PA-30 · Accident: on ground/water collision with object
From Seattle Paine Field International Airport (PAE) to UNKNOWN
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's aircraft involved. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA98LA085
- 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
- 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-30 Possible conflict
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-30
- 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
- N98NT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Seattle Paine Field International Airport (PAE)To UNKNOWN
- 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
- Other
- 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
- On ground/water collision with object
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft unattended/engine(s) running, attempted
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot taxied the twin engine PA-30 (90 gallon fuel capacity) to a self service fueling island. There, he fueled the aircraft with 58.15 gallons of fuel at 1503. The aircraft was taxied back to the pilot's hangar area. Sometime thereafter, the pilot had used a jumper cable to connect the battery of his car to the aircraft's electrical system at the power receptacle located on the left side of the nose. Approximately 1732, with both engines running, the pilot exited the aircraft to remove the chock from the nose-wheel during which the aircraft rolled forward (east) and eventually impacted a parked Cessna primarily along its leading edge of the right wing. The PA-30's right engine stopped upon wing contact, and the momentum carried both aircraft in a clockwise arc a short distance southeast. The PA-30's left engine continued running after the collision. At a point consistent with the PA-30's initial contact with the Cessna, a pool of blood identified the spot were the pilot was first struck by the PA-30's left propeller. He drug himself under the PA-30 and into a 4:30 position stopping at a point close to the nose-wheel chock which was entangled in the jumper cables. A witness who spoke with the pilot reported that he remarked that 'I knew better, (unknown) was not removed, and the wind caught me.' The pilot was airlifted to a major hospital and expired approximately 10 hours later.
Probable cause
The pilot-in-command's exiting the aircraft with both engines running to remove a wheel chock. A factor was the inadequate preflight of the aircraft (not removing the chock) prior to engine start.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA98LA085
- Event ID
- 20001211X10421
- Case number
- SEA98LA085
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1998-06-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: dd46c543a7afd746fe8d17bd43d224a53cd8506f34f9384de1be9f484e1b9c52; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:33:40.669Z.