SEA01FA175 · Piper PA-30
Piper PA-30 · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From Friedman Memorial Airport (SUN) to McCall Municipal Airport (MYL)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA01FA175
- 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
- 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-30
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-30
- 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
- N954S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Friedman Memorial Airport (SUN), Hailey, IDTo McCall Municipal Airport (MYL), McCall, ID
- 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
- 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 engine power
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After the pilot made a normal-sounding base turn call for runway 34 on the airport's common traffic advisory frequency (CTAF), the airplane was observed by witnesses to experience a nose drop and crash into a cattle pasture about 3/4 mile short of the runway. On-site examination disclosed wreckage and impact signatures consistent with an uncontrolled, right wing low, relatively low-speed impact, as well as physical and instrument evidence of a left engine power loss. However, the aircraft's left propeller was not feathered, and gear and flaps were found to be fully extended at the time of impact. The reason for the left engine power loss was not determined; however, the following findings potentially related to left engine performance were noted: both engines were approximately 300 hours past the manufacturer's recommended time between overhauls (TBO), evidence of improper idle mixture and idle stop adjustments to the left engine by maintenance personnel was discovered during post-accident fuel system component testing (a work order, dated the day before the accident but without any corresponding aircraft or engine logbook entries, further indicated that "MIXTURE IDLE CUTOFF" and "FUEL PRESSURE" had been adjusted on both engines), and the left side fuel selector was found in the AUX position (the aircraft owner's handbook specifies the MAIN position for descent and landing.) Post-accident testing demonstrated that the left propeller feathered quickly and smoothly when oil pressure was removed from the hub, and that the left propeller governor would cut oil pressure to the hub.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed following a loss of power on the left engine, resulting in loss of aircraft control. Factors included a loss of power on the left engine for undetermined reasons, and the pilot's failure to properly configure the airplane for the engine-out condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA01FA175
- Event ID
- 20011030X02160
- Case number
- SEA01FA175
- 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, coordinates. 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: 1c5cf2c1445b654fa6e3524daa6247f8146e258c8200eb4c85a79de6f1732b59; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:20:33.345Z.