SEA03LA134 · Archer S-18T
Archer S-18T · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Scappoose Industrial Airpark (SPB) to Arlington Municipal Airport (AWO)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA03LA134
- 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
Archer S-18T
- Aircraft type
- Archer S-18
- 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
- N102PM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Scappoose Industrial Airpark (SPB), Scappoose, ORTo Arlington Municipal Airport (AWO), Arlington, 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
- Approach · VFR pattern base
- 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
- 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/mush
- 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(vs), 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 pilot, who was arriving at Arlington less than ten minutes prior to the time the field was to be closed for an air show, was instructed by the tower to turn base early in order to sequence him in front of an aircraft he was in trail of. Although he was instructed to turn base early so that he could land adjacent to a set of cones set near mid-field, the pilot did not see the cones most of the time he was on base leg. He said that while on base he did not see the cones until the last minute, and when he did, he initiated his turn to final. At the point he started the turn, he was approximately 50 feet above the surface, and because he was so close to the runway, he steepened his turn to near 60 degrees. During the turn the airplane stalled and rolled to a position where the wings where 90 degrees to the ground. The pilot then released back pressure, applied corrective rudder and aileron, and was able to get the wings level, but almost immediately thereafter the aircraft impacted the surface of the runway with sufficient force to result in substantial damage.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain an airspeed above Vs (stalling speed) while making a close-in base-to-final turn.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA03LA134
- Event ID
- 20030731X01245
- Case number
- SEA03LA134
- 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: 4b6224edb88e9d7970745e37f8566d69665e0c6a6abee81fb3d4dc8d115bc1d8; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:02:18.008Z.