SEA02LA129 · Rockwell International 690A
Rockwell International 690A · Accident: hard landing
From Roberts Field (RDM) to Crescent Lake State Airport (5S2)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA02LA129
- 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
Rockwell International 690A
- Aircraft type
- Rockwell 690
- 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
- N690RE
- Operator
- Gisler, Patrick M · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Roberts Field (RDM), Redmond, ORTo Crescent Lake State Airport (5S2), Crescent Lake, 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Proper descent rate › 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
The pilot called the Oregon State Department of Aeronautics and was briefed on the conditions related to the 3,900 foot long, paved runway at Crescent Lake as well as the shifting wind conditions encountered at the airport. Upon arrival at the airport in the Rockwell 690A turboprop twin, the pilot set up for an approach to runway 31. The aircraft's GPS/Air Data computer indicated southwesterly winds at 7 knots and the windsock indicated southerly winds. He also reported that the windsock was indicating southerly winds at about half a sock. Approximately 30 feet above the runway threshold, in the landing configuration and at 90 knots, the pilot encountered turbulent/wind shift conditions. The stall warning sounded, the nose dropped, and indicated airspeed dropped abruptly from 90 knots to about 80 knots. The pilot applied full power and pitched the nose up about 15 degrees but was unable to arrest the descent rate during which the empennage impacted the runway surface slightly north of the displaced threshold. The aircraft 's nose wheel struck the runway immediately thereafter, and the nose gear separated with the aircraft skidding approximately 1,300 feet down the runway to a stop. There were no published restrictions for the use of either runway 13 or 31.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain proper rate of descent resulting in a hard landing and subsequent nose gear separation. Contributing factors were the turbulent crosswind conditions the pilot encountered just before touchdown.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA02LA129
- Event ID
- 20020726X01221
- Case number
- SEA02LA129
- 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: 1d03773eb0caf13ff5217b25dcd56a1b4350168591955b973407406b6df110e8; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:43:26.511Z.