SEA07FA031 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Bandon State Airport (S05) to S05
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA07FA031
- 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
- 1 · 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-28-140
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N5618U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bandon State Airport (S05), Bandon, ORTo S05
- 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 turn to 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
- 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 › Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Approximately 30 minutes after the pilot's initial takeoff, witnesses reported seeing the airplane in a steep, nose-low, left downwind to base turn for the intended runway. The witness reported the airplane continued the descending turn until loosing sight of the aircraft behind a tree line. The wreckage was later located in the general vicinity of the witnesses sighting. The airplane impacted terrain in the left wing down, nose-low attitude. The pilot's last radio transmission, on the Unicom frequency, was a position report indicating he was turning from downwind to base. A review of logbook records indicated the student pilot had accumulated approximately 325 hours of total time, of which 261 hours were solo. The pilot's past medical history included nonspecific recent arm pain. Severe atherosclerotic heart disease was cited as a significant finding in the autopsy. Toxicology testing revealed positive results for a prescription anti-depressant. The pilot held a current student pilot certificate. Post accident examination of the wreckage revealed no evidence to indicate a pre-impact mechanical malfunction or irregularity with the airplane that may have contributed to the accident.
Probable cause
The loss of aircraft control in the traffic pattern for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA07FA031
- Event ID
- 20061231X01860
- Case number
- SEA07FA031
- 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: 84766b4b53e1f3a544b9f4c67f14f62bfe574dd91290b58070b2782bb2877cdd; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:57:52.221Z.