SEA98LA173 · Koskella LONG EZ
Koskella LONG EZ · Accident: undershoot on approach
From U70 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA98LA173
- 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
Koskella LONG EZ
- Aircraft type
- Koskella LONG EZ
- 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
- N5159P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From U70To 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 pattern final
- 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
- Undershoot
- 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 maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot, a Navy test pilot with approximately 1500 hours total flight time in the Long EZ, reported that on short final the aircraft began to settle rapidly and touched down hard approximately 250 feet short of the threshold. He indicated that there was no mechanical malfunction with the aircraft's power plant or systems. However, in his written report, he stated that on short final he 'scanned the instrument panel and noticed the airspeed read 100 mph. (This is way too high to stop a Long EZ on a 4000' runway.) Aircraft attitude seemed normal, approach was at appropriate altitude/lineup, so I reduced power and deployed the speed brake. In my aircraft, the speed brake blows closed at 95 mph from aerodynamic forces-it stayed out. As I mentally started processing the fact that the speed brake did not blow back, I sensed an increase in the rate of descent. I retracted the speed brake, added full power, and eased the nose up-touching down 250' short of the runway.' The pilot also reported that he believed the 'airspeed indicator stuck at 100 mph during final approach.' He stated that 'I'm not sure this could have reasonably been foreseen or prevented; higher approach speed would have prevented the settle that developed on short final, but I would have had to instantly recognize the airspeed indicator error. By the time I recognized an excess rate of descent and initiated a wave-off, it was too late to avoid touching down.'
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed on final approach. Factors include inadequate remedial action and erroneous airspeed indications.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA98LA173
- Event ID
- 20001211X11164
- Case number
- SEA98LA173
- 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: 76004ec02d542a6bd9430e62c11e46ad97033327138b4f3b7fa4827d7dbb911f; retrieved 2026-09-22T16:55:46.623Z.