SEA03LA196 · Beech T-34 (A-45)
Beech T-34 (A-45) · Accident: vortex turbulence encountered on approach
From McCall Municipal Airport (MYL) to McCall Municipal Airport (MYL)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA03LA196
- 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
Beech T-34 (A-45)
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft T-34
- 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
- N234KC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From McCall Municipal Airport (MYL), McCall, IDTo McCall Municipal Airport (MYL)
- 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
- Vortex turbulence encountered
- 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 › Remedial action, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Upon returning to the airport after a local flight, the pilot sequenced himself into the traffic pattern behind an Aviat Husky that was following a De Havilland Beaver. Just after he rolled out on final with his gear down and his flaps retracted for a no-flap landing, the pilot noticed that the Beaver was pulling off of the runway. He therefore continued on final at an airspeed about 10 to 15 knots above the aircraft's no-flap stall speed. As he neared the runway in calm wind conditions, the pilot concluded that the Husky, which had landed just beyond the threshold, would not be exiting the runway before he touched down. He therefore decided to execute a go-around. As he was adding full power, the aircraft encountered a disturbance most likely created by the Beaver, resulting in the left wing suddenly dropping and the aircraft losing about 50 feet of altitude. As the engine revved to full power, the pilot was able get the wings level and stop the altitude loss, but his remedial action was insufficient to fly out of the disturbance, and almost immediately thereafter the right wing dropped and the aircraft fell another 20 feet onto the terrain.
Probable cause
The inadequacy of the pilot's remedial action taken in an attempt to fly out of an encounter with the wake vortex turbulence created by a preceding aircraft while on short final to land. Factors include calm winds in the area of the final approach course, and the pilot's inadvertent encounter with wake vortex turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA03LA196
- Event ID
- 20031001X01646
- Case number
- SEA03LA196
- 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: e09607a3ea9f390e64cce4f8d24e474edf61eb2ae7026b4ba5b2ed5bc17147b1; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:22:36.823Z.