SEA04LA021 · Piper PA-22-135
Piper PA-22-135 · Accident: overrun during landing
From Emmett Municipal Airport (S78) to S78
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA04LA021
- 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-22-135
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-22
- 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
- N8982C
- Operator
- Mednicoff, Steve J. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Emmett Municipal Airport (S78), Emmett, IDTo S78
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- Overrun
- 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
- Fluid, hydraulic › Inadequate
- Maintenance, service of aircraft/equipment › Not performed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 118 hour pilot had less than 16 hours in the make/model, and the aircraft was equipped with a closed hydraulic brake system which was temperature sensitive. The pilot departed on a local flight, flew two touch and go landings and then climbed out to a higher (cooler) altitude before returning to the airfield for a full stop landing. During the landing roll the pilot was unable to achieve braking and the aircraft rolled off the upwind end of the runway, down an embankment and into a ditch. A significant drop in temperature had taken place over the previous several days to the flight and, according to a pilot/mechanic with 40 years of experience in the make/model, the aircraft's braking system would become ineffective if the system had less than optimal amount of hydraulic fluid and was then subjected to a significant cold soaking. Post-crash examination of the brakes by an FAA inspector revealed no mechanical malfunction, however the examination was conducted in a heated hangar.
Probable cause
Brake failure as a result of inadequate hydraulic (brake) fluid in the aircraft's closed brake system. Contributing factors were the pilot's overall lack of experience in the aircraft make/model, the cold soaked brake system due to the low temperatures, and the embankment and ditch.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA04LA021
- Event ID
- 20031126X01954
- Case number
- SEA04LA021
- 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: babda060cf4f878b35a109deebec5c5775e70adcf524f5ee6eda3461b3c0dfdb; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:08:44.389Z.