SEA01LA087 · Piper PA-34-200
Avia Aviation Services Piper PA-34-200 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Corvallis Municipal Airport (CVO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA01LA087
- 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
- Unknown
- 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-34-200
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-34
- 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
- N47GM
- Operator
- Avia Aviation Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Corvallis Municipal Airport (CVO), Corvallis, ORTo 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- 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
- Copilot/second pilot › Airspeed(vmc), not maintained
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Go-around, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The accident flight was an instructional flight with two airline transport pilot-rated pilots aboard, of whom one was a flight instructor and the other was undergoing training to become a multiengine airplane flight instructor. Approximately 1 hour after takeoff, the flight instructor initiated a simulated left engine failure situation approximately 5 nautical miles east of the airport. A visual flight rules approach was performed to runway 27 with the left engine set to a zero-thrust condition. During the landing flare, the student instructor (who, according to the flight instructor, was controlling the aircraft at the time) did not maintain alignment with the runway centerline. The airplane's airspeed also dropped below the airplane's single-engine minimum control airspeed (Vmc) in the landing flare. The flight instructor called for a go-around, both pilots advanced the throttles, and the aircraft "accelerated normally and begin [sic] a climb", according to the flight instructor. The flight instructor then reduced flaps to 10 degrees. The aircraft then began to roll and yaw to the left. The flight instructor applied full right aileron and full right rudder, and reduced power on both engines in an effort to regain control. The aircraft then struck the ground in approximately a 30-degree left banked attitude, spun around and caught fire. Post-accident examinations of the aircraft's flight controls and left engine by FAA and Textron Lycoming investigators did not reveal any evidence of pre-impact mechanical discrepancies.
Probable cause
The student instructor's failure to maintain the airplane's minimum control airspeed during a practice single-engine approach, and the flight instructor's failure to direct or accomplish a timely go-around, resulting in loss of aircraft control with insufficient altitude for recovery. A factor was the student instructor's failure to maintain runway alignment during the approach.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA01LA087
- Event ID
- 20010522X00991
- Case number
- SEA01LA087
- 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 2001-05-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ff701928643d8d2850455be33ef3de98e2ee4115f998c5d129be9fcad7567c77; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:08:30.571Z.