SEA03LA009 · Piper PA-28-201T
Piper PA-28-201T · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From La Grande/Union County Airport (LGD) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA03LA009
- 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-28-201T
- 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
- N2208Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From La Grande/Union County Airport (LGD), La Grande, 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Designated examiner › Supervision, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Raising of flaps, premature
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a private pilot check ride with a student pilot and pilot examiner, the student was simulating an engine out emergency landing procedure to an open field. Full flaps had been extended when the field was attainable. The examiner stated that he called for the go-around when the aircraft was about 100 feet agl. The student stated that at this time, he reached over to push in the throttle, however, the examiners hand was still on the throttle control. The throttle was only pushed in about half way and the student felt the power kick in and he reached over and retracted two notches of flaps. The aircraft then entered a pronounced sink rate. The aircraft touched down, then became airborne for a short distance before nosing down and colliding with the up sloping terrain. No mechanical failures or malfunctions were reported by either the student pilot or the examiner. The examiner reported in a written statement that from the time he realized that they were going to impact the terrain, to the time the aircraft came to rest, he did nothing to assist the student pilot and found it odd that he did not attempt to help. The examiner felt that the student had been executing the go-around procedures properly.
Probable cause
Inadequate supervision and the premature raising of flaps before a positive climb was established.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA03LA009
- Event ID
- 20021118X05483
- Case number
- SEA03LA009
- 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: f3dafa0f8c70a29489c2c4a6115344f7adc7aef70ec155a52f4e80ca14a228b8; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:56:11.035Z.