SEA87FA098 · Piper PA-31-350
Piper PA-31-350 · Accident: loss of control in flight
From North Las Vegas Airport (VGT) to UNKOWN
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA87FA098
- 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
- 1 · 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-31-350
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-31
- 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
- N22LV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Las Vegas Airport (VGT), North Las Vegas, NVTo UNKOWN
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Unqualified person › Airspeed, not maintained
- Unqualified person › Impairment(alcohol)
- Unqualified person › Judgment, poor
- Unqualified person › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of North Las Vegas, NV, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
A MECHANIC, WHO WAS NOT RATED AS A PLT, TOOK THE ACFT WITHOUT PERMISSION & ELECTED TO TAKEOFF AT NGT. A WITNESS SAW THE ACFT DEP AT ABOUT 0250 PDT. SUBSEQUENTLY, IT CRASHED APRX 3 MI ENE OF THE ARPT IN AN OPEN UNDEVELOPED AREA. THE TIME OF THE ACDNT WAS NOT DETERMINED, BUT A CLOCK IN THE WRECKAGE HAD STOPPED AT 0355. THERE WAS EVIDENCE THE ACFT HAD IMPACTED IN A NOSE DOWN, INVERTED ATTITUDE WHILE ON A NNE HDG. THE ACFT MOVED ONLY 28' AFTER IMPACT & CAME TO REST INVERTED WITH THE GEAR EXTENDED & THE FLAPS RETRACTED. NO PREIMPACT MECHANICAL PROBLEM WAS FND. TOXICOLOGY TESTS SHOWED THE PLT HAD A BLOOD/ALCOHOL LVL OF 0.37% & A VITREOUS/ALCOHOL LVL OF 0.33%. NO RECORD WAS FND TO INDC THAT HE HAD ENGAGED IN ANY PREVIOUS FORMAL FLT TRAINING. THERE WAS EVIDENCE THE PLT HAD BEEN UNDER RECENT STRESS. A FRIEND RPRTD THE PLT & HIS WIFE WERE 'BREAKING UP.' THE PLT'S WIFE RPRTD HE HAD A DRINKING PROBLEM' WHICH WAS THE REASON FOR THEIR SEPN.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA87FA098
- Event ID
- 20001213X31038
- Case number
- SEA87FA098
- 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: d93a7126c3ba8c9fd682c6ce87229660495b826153154b4df6e16bc66d96b226; retrieved 2026-09-21T04:08:20.148Z.