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CHI99LA197 · Porter SEAREY

26 Jun 1999 · Morenci, MI, United States

Porter SEAREY · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering

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Event

NTSB case
CHI99LA197
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

Porter SEAREY

Aircraft type
Porter SEAREY
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
N827P
Operator
Roger L. Porter · private individual
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From not recordedTo 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
Maneuvering
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
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
  • Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The pilot had just taken off from his private airstrip and did not believe that he could clear the trees at the end of the runway. The pilot decided to make a landing in an adjacent field that would require a turn of approximately 150 degrees. The pilot stated that the steep turn required resulted in a stall and subsequent nose down impact with the ground. The runway surface consisted of dry sod six inches high, which the pilot stated as a reason that the airplane did not reach rotation speed as soon as normal. The runway is approximately 965 feet long and 75 feet wide with high trees approximately 350 feet from the departure end of the runway. There is a slight uphill grade to the runway.

Probable cause

the pilots inadequate preflight planning and his failure to maintain airspeed. Factors to the accident were the high trees at the departure end of the runway, and the stall encountered.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record CHI99LA197
Event ID
20001212X18954
Case number
CHI99LA197
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: 4e0219d20e7f59efa5ed836c8eb5b61ada7140d0d68a0bc45904ee986a15f6a5; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:29:45.296Z.