SEA03LA022 · Piper PA-46-350P
Piper PA-46-350P · Accident: hard landing
From Portland International Airport (PDX) to Tri Cities Airport (PSC)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA03LA022
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-46-350P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-46
- 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
- N9260P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Portland International Airport (PDX), Portland, ORTo Tri Cities Airport (PSC), Pasco, WA
- 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
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall
- 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
- Weather condition › Icing conditions
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 reported that after descending to a lower altitude, the airframe began picking up moderate to severe mixed ice. The pilot cycled the de-icing boots and turned on the windshield heat. After climbing back to a higher altitude, most of the ice cleared. The pilot was then cleared for the ILS approach. The pilot stated that the aircraft broke out of the clouds at about 400 feet and 1/4 mile from the runway. When the aircraft was over the runway numbers and about ten feet above the runway, the aircraft unexpectedly stalled. The pilot added full power, however, the right main landing gear touched down hard and the right wing tip contacted the runway surface. The landing was completed and the pilot taxied the airplane to the hangar. After exiting the aircraft, the pilot noted that most of the airframe was moderately to severely covered with ice, to include the leading edges of the vertical and horizontal stabilizers and the propeller spinner.
Probable cause
Icing conditions and the pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed during the landing. An inadvertent stall was a factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA03LA022
- Event ID
- 20030106X00022
- Case number
- SEA03LA022
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2002-12-01.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2d35d0d22b46355b203f91ae02a5f826d4dc080981f8bfdcd2818583684329bd; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:51:17.574Z.