SEA98LA113 · Piper PA-18
Piper PA-18 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Big Creek Airport (U60) to Caldwell Executive Airport (EUL)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA98LA113
- 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-18
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-18
- 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
- N44536
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Big Creek Airport (U60)To Caldwell Executive Airport (EUL), Caldwell, ID
- 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
- Maneuvering · turn to landing area (emergency)
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/mush
- 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(vs), not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Just after takeoff from the grass/turf airstrip, the pilot sensed that something was wrong with the way the aircraft was performing. Since he was concerned that the perceived performance irregularity may be related to a 'repair' he had performed using duct tape to strengthen a bent wing rib and to cover torn wing skin, he elected to make an immediate emergency landing. In order to land in the opposite direction from which he took off, the pilot turned right about 70 or 80 degrees, and then entered a steeply banked left turn in order to bring the aircraft back around to the runway. As the aircraft neared the runway, the turn tightened, and the pilot let the aircraft get below minimum power-on stalling speed. The aircraft then stall/mushed into the terrain. According to witnesses, the aircraft never got more than 100 feet above the ground (AGL) during the entire maneuver. The density altitude was later calculated to be approximately 7,800 feet.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed while maneuvering to an emergency landing, resulting in an inadvertent stall/mush into the terrain. A contributing factor was the high density altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA98LA113
- Event ID
- 20001211X10438
- Case number
- SEA98LA113
- 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: 95c4fa0924218e8e9a3fcb318a5ac5d3c57df9b828ab11acc42a3e2d779bdb4e; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:27:22.266Z.