SEA00LA078 · Piper PA-36-300
Piper PA-36-300 · Accident: on ground/water encounter with weather during takeoff
From an unrecorded airport to LEXINGTON, OR
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA00LA078
- 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-36-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-36
- 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
- N82698
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo LEXINGTON, OR
- 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
- On ground/water encounter with weather
- 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 › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After completing aerial application operations for the day, the pilot took off to the north on a private airstrip with an approaching thunderstorm cell and heavy rain in the area. During takeoff, winds in the area shifted to southwesterly at about 20 knots, gusting to 25 knots (a nearby weather observation station reported winds shifting from north-northwesterly at 10 knots at 1800 to southwesterly at 27 knots, gusting to 32 knots, at 1900.) The pilot was unable to maintain directional control and the aircraft ground-looped, collapsing its right main gear and damaging its right wing. The pilot reported that no mechanical failure or malfunction was involved.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to adequately compensate for wind conditions upon encountering a wind shift on takeoff. A factor was variable winds.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA00LA078
- Event ID
- 20001212X20928
- Case number
- SEA00LA078
- 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 2000-04-22.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2b569dbbeb86f13db8089a88303f9af7ecc6515907713107a8dc53d429971c06; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:57:15.044Z.