SEA03LA067 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: undershoot on approach
From Lewiston Nez Perce County Airport (LWS) to Orofino Municipal Airport (S68)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA03LA067
- 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-28-140
- 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
- N6268W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lewiston Nez Perce County Airport (LWS), Lewiston, IDTo Orofino Municipal Airport (S68), Orofino, 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Undershoot
- 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
- Pilot in command › Distance/speed, misjudged
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 set up for landing on runway 27 (2,500' X 50'). When he was approximately on a one-mile final he realized he was a little low and slow, and slowly started adding power. As the airplane came in over the river which borders the runway on the east, about a 1/4 mile final, it experienced a loss of lift and subsequently impacted terrain 50 feet short of the runway. The aircraft veered onto a grassy area where it skidded for 100 yards before coming to rest in an upright position. Both propeller blades were damaged, the nose gear collapsed rearward, the leading edge of the right wing was dented as a result of impacting a runway edge light, and there was substantial damage to the firewall.
Probable cause
The pilot's misjudgment of speed and distance resulting in a loss of airspeed, stall and undershoot of runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA03LA067
- Event ID
- 20030425X00568
- Case number
- SEA03LA067
- 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: 29cf2d6d28d94ea3e3411d4328133743d62f62e6d17d7b03431622d1feafe376; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:23:12.117Z.