SEA04FA127 · Extra Flugzeugrau Gmbh EA 300/L
Extra Flugzeugrau Gmbh EA 300/L · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (BOI) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA04FA127
- 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
Extra Flugzeugrau Gmbh EA 300/L
- Aircraft type
- Extra Flugzeugrau EA-300
- 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
- N609JW
- Operator
- Steven R. Appleton · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (BOI), Boise, IDTo not recorded
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Clearance, 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 was performing a variety of aerobatic maneuvers in a low level aerobatic box over flat desert terrain. Two cameras positioned to document the flight sequence revealed the pilot initiated a loop maneuver by pulling the nose of the airplane up into a vertical climb attitude and continuing to the top of the maneuver until in an inverted position. The pilot continued the maneuver by descending on the back side of the loop. As the aircraft was approaching the bottom of the maneuver in an approximately 20 degree nose down, wings level attitude at an altitude of less than 100 feet above ground level, the airplane was observed to make a quick shallow left bank, followed immediately by a second shallow bank to the right. The airplane's wings then momentarily returned to a level attitude before impacting flat open terrain with its right main landing gear and right wing tip. The pilot said he couldn't remember the specific maneuver prior to making contact with the ground, and could not recall being concerned with not having enough clearance to complete the maneuver. A post accident examination of the airplane failed to reveal any anomalies which would have precluded normal operations.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to maintain clearance with terrain during descent while conducting an aerobatic maneuver. Low altitude flight was a factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA04FA127
- Event ID
- 20040722X01030
- Case number
- SEA04FA127
- 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 2004-07-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: cb112496c5dc62942cf48ca6598a898c6e1e06a04c08e6fe7358260c4bc1f8b8; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:15:42.400Z.