SEA99LA069 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: in flight collision with object during takeoff
From an unrecorded airport to 06S · ACME, WA
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA99LA069
- 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-28-140
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N6216W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 06S · ACME, WA
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- In flight 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aborted takeoff, delayed
- Pilot in command › Procedures/directives, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he initiated takeoff from a field of three inch high grass utilizing short field takeoff procedures and with the flaps retracted. As he approached the upwind end of the 1,680 foot field he applied '1 notch (10 degrees) of flaps' and then 'waited until the end and then pulled the plane in the air.' A witness reported observing the aircraft's flaps 'at 0 degrees' and that 'the aircraft was maintaining a high angle of attack and not climbing upon rotation from the runway. It continued in this attitude at about 5 feet off the ground until one of the main landing gear wheels hit a fence post on the airport boundary fence.' The pilot reported that 'about 500' or so from the tree line I could see there was just no way to get over the trees or build enough airspeed, so I pulled all power and landed in what room was left. [I] applied full brakes, then I could tell I wasn't going to stop in time, so I turned the airplane just a little to the left & crashed between 2 trees which pulled the wings off.' The Owner's Handbook for the PA-28-140 stated that both 'short field' and 'soft field' takeoffs should be conducted with two notches of flaps (25 degrees) and that 'Premature or excessive raising of the nose will result in a delayed take-off. After take-off let the aircraft accelerate to the desired climb speed by lowering the nose slightly.'
Probable cause
The pilot-in-command's improper execution of takeoff procedures, and his delay in aborting the takeoff. Contributing factors were the fence post and trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA99LA069
- Event ID
- 20001212X18893
- Case number
- SEA99LA069
- 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: 9366b82a3e9c574c8188cb4c54bcf269e2863ba700608a103ff19f9508ba3673; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:06:00.275Z.