SEA04CA174 · Luscombe 8A
Luscombe 8A · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From S67 · Nampa, ID to S67
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA04CA174
- 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
Luscombe 8A
- Aircraft type
- Luscombe 8
- 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
- N1983B
- Operator
- Ronald G. Hanks · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From S67 · Nampa, IDTo S67
- 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
- Loss of control on ground/water
- 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 › Directional control, 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 flight instructor at the controls of the aircraft had come to the Nampa Airport with another individual who was in the process of buying the subject aircraft. The purpose of the flight was for the instructor to familiarize himself with the aircraft, so that that he could give instruction to the new owner as they both flew it back to Texas. After flying the aircraft around the local area for a short period, the instructor pilot executed one touch-and-go landing, and then went around the traffic pattern for another. During the landing roll of the second landing, the aircraft started to veer from side to side, and then entered into the pilot called an "aggravated pilot induced oscillation." He therefore applied full aft stick in order to get more tail wheel authority. According to this pilot, as he pulled the stick aft, he "inadvertently added left aileron," which raised the right wing. At that point in the landing sequence, the aircraft began to veer off the right side of the runway, and the pilot applied full left rudder, significant left brake, and full power. These inputs were not sufficient to straighten the track of the aircraft, which departed the right side of the runway. Soon after departing the runway, the aircraft encountered soft terrain, and the left main gear collapsed. In a telephone conversation with the NTSB, the pilot who had been at the controls stated that he had been "slow to recognize" the situation that lead to the loss of control. During the investigation it was determined that this pilot's total previous experience in a Luscombe was one hour.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during the landing roll. Factors include the pilot's very low total time in this make and model aircraft (one hour), and the soft terrain the aircraft encountered along the side of the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA04CA174
- Event ID
- 20040916X01444
- Case number
- SEA04CA174
- 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: b79caccc17d13651fcd00825311d7283779c13a1c5cac57522b9795918ce6c7b; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:50:01.537Z.