SEA98LA171 · Dornbos BD-4
Dornbos BD-4 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Norman Grier Field (S36) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA98LA171
- 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
Dornbos BD-4
- Aircraft type
- Dornbos BD-4
- 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
- N91LJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Norman Grier Field (S36), Kent, WATo 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
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that he performed a normal wheel-landing. During the landing roll, the airplane began to veer to the left of centerline. The flight instructor indicated to the commercial pilot, who was following on the controls, not to apply brakes. The flight instructor stated that he corrected the direction of travel back to centerline as the tail wheel was lowered. The airplane remained on centerline for several hundred feet, then began to veer to the right. The airplane continued to veer to the right and traveled off the runway at approximately mid-field. The airplane subsequently ground-looped before coming to rest on the grassy area between the runway and taxiway. The flight instructor reported that there were no mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
Directional control was not maintained by the pilot in command.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA98LA171
- Event ID
- 20001211X10964
- Case number
- SEA98LA171
- 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 1998-08-26.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 75b45aa448d8d24efd015b0054b5c1634e2f7b4ec66bbb63125d1903342fdffa; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:00:52.516Z.