SEA07CA123 · Piper PA28-235
Piper PA28-235 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather during landing
From Oroville Municipal Airport (OVE) to Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA07CA123
- 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 PA28-235
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N8581W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oroville Municipal Airport (OVE), Oroville, CATo Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV), San Jose, CA
- 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
- 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 encounter with weather
- 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 › Aircraft control, not possible
- Weather condition › Windshear
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 reported that while on short final to runway 31R, approximately 30 feet above ground level (agl), he encountered a "lurching, slamming sensation and the aircraft lunged toward the ground." The pilot stated he applied "full" power, however the airplane continued to descend and struck the ground. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the landing gear and wing. The pilot reported that he encountered "severe low-level wind shear" while on final approach. He estimated an airspeed loss of 15-20 knots at 30 feet agl. The pilot reported that the winds were from 300 degrees (magnetic) at 15 knots.
Probable cause
Wind shear encounter during approach for landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA07CA123
- Event ID
- 20070617X00753
- Case number
- SEA07CA123
- 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 2007-05-07.
- API snapshot SHA-256: eca4d32f0a1803f148e93f5c3f2ef506f2b05b973b9b340f9c61d799b325f2b1; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:50:55.005Z.