SEA03LA005 · IV Inc. LANCAIR IV
IV Inc. LANCAIR IV · Accident: hard landing
From Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (BOI) to Coeur d'Alene, ID
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA03LA005
- 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
- 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
IV Inc. LANCAIR IV
- Aircraft type
- Iv LANCAIR
- 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
- N599L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (BOI), Boise, IDTo Coeur d'Alene, 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
- 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 › Proper alignment, not maintained
- Pilot in command › 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 1,915 hour commercial pilot, who had never landed at the destination and who had more than 100 hours in make/model, over flew the destination landing site in the Lancair IV aircraft. While descending northbound overhead the 2,206 foot long, 40 foot wide unmarked, asphalt runway he commenced a left spiraling descent to land on runway 07. On short final the aircraft's Electronic Flight Information System recorded the pilot pitching the aircraft's nose up to nearly +14 degrees and the aircraft's airspeed began to rapidly bleed off making it difficult for both front seat occupants to ascertain runway alignment. The aircraft then landed very hard and far right of centerline with the left wheel within 3 feet of the south edge of the pavement and the right wheel on down sloping gravel. The aircraft then veered further right off the runway as the pilot applied power for a go-around, with the aircraft eventually impacting conifer trees growing 30 feet south of the runway's edge.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate flare and his failure to maintain runway alignment. The pilot's lack of familiarity,downsloping terrain, and trees are contributing factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA03LA005
- Event ID
- 20021021X05353
- Case number
- SEA03LA005
- 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: b8426057417ab17e5ebf9ac6f515f11f35b3429decf76990bfe919ad7addb467; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:43:53.416Z.