SEA02LA186 · Piper PA-28-161
Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: hard landing
From Spokane International Airport (GEG) to Spokane International Airport (GEG)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA02LA186
- 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-28-161
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N132ND
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Spokane International Airport (GEG), Spokane, WATo Spokane International Airport (GEG)
- 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
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Remedial action, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor told his student to make his landing on the second centerline stripe of the runway. After turning final, the student established a stabilized approach at the correct airspeed, but with a glideslope that would take him past the desired second stripe touchdown point. Because runway length was not a critical factor, the instructor decided to let the student continue on the higher than desired glideslope so that he would learn that it would take him past the desired point of touchdown. Reportedly, when the aircraft was still about 20 feet above the runway surface, the student reduced the power to idle and started to flare prematurely, and the aircraft ultimately leveled off about 10 feet above the runway. The instructor then advised the student that they were too high, and that if they landed from that height "...it would be rough." The student therefore added power (about one-quarter throttle) and lowered the nose in order to descend to a point closer to the runway. Soon after starting to make this adjustment, the student flared a second time, and the aircraft fell to the runway surface from an altitude that was still too high. As the aircraft began to fall toward the runway, the instructor reached for the throttle in order to initiate a go-around, but just as he made contact with it, the aircraft impacted the runway with sufficient force to result in substantial damage. At that point, the instructor took control of the aircraft, completed the landing sequence, and then taxied to an area where the aircraft could be checked for damage. According to the instructor, there was no indication of any problem with the engine or flight control system that would have contributed to the accident, and the FAA Inspector who looked at the aircraft did not find evidence of any such anomaly.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's delay of the remedial action necessary to correct for the student pilot's error during the landing flare. Factors include the student pilot's misjudgment of the aircraft's height above the runway when he initiated the flare.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA02LA186
- Event ID
- 20021003X05277
- Case number
- SEA02LA186
- 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: 6f739484cf92d05288fc2b9dc39858d5d41f12f1c54866ee0b57132c37a2325a; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:10:31.184Z.