SEA86FA098 · Piper PA-32-301T
Piper PA-32-301T · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Mccarley Field (U02) to Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA86FA098
- 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
- 2 · 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-32-301T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N82238
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mccarley Field (U02), Blackfoot, IDTo Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC), Salt Lake City, UT
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft handling, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
RADAR TRACK SHOWED ACFT MADE NORMAL CLIMB ON COURSE FROM AIRPORT (ELEV 4488 FT MSL) TO 9400 FT. MSL, THEN EXECUTED A LEFT TURN OF ABOUT 90 DEGREES, CLIMBING TO 9700 FT MSL AS SHOWN BY NEXT-TO-LAST RADAR TGT. 29 SECS LATER, FINAL RADAR TGT SHOWED 6900 FT MSL. WITNESSES SIGHTED ACFT SPINNING WITH PIECES COMING OFF BEFORE STRIKING GROUND. WEATHER STUDY INDICATED CONVECTIVE CLOUDS IN AREA FROM 2000 FT TO 10000 FT MSL. INVESTIGATION REVEALED RT WING AND EMPENNAGE SEPARATED IN AERODYNAMIC OVERLOAD FAILURE MODE. MAX DESIGN MANEUVERING SPEED CALCULATED TO BE 123 KNOTS AT EXISTING ACFT WEIGHT. CIRCUMSTANCES INDICATE PLT LOST CONTROL OF ACFT WHILE MANEUVERING TO AVOID/REVERSE COURSE OUT OF CLOUDS, OVERSTRESSED AIRFRAME DURING RECOVERY ATTEMPT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA86FA098
- Event ID
- 20001213X33413
- Case number
- SEA86FA098
- 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: c3603f86bd4f438cd150426de05ee77ff711fe60b77e41f3fb48c4b02f399579; retrieved 2026-09-21T04:36:46.051Z.