WPR10LA370 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: hard landing
From Martin Field (S95) to Martin Field (S95)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10LA370
- 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-28-180
- 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
- N57PJ
- Operator
- Robert Schmidt
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Martin Field (S95), College Place, WATo Martin Field (S95), College Place, WA
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- Defining eventThe 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Physical
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was going to conduct a local scenic flight, and had taken a Dramamine prior to takeoff in anticipation of turbulence over the mountains. Prior to takeoff, the pilot reported that the fuel tanks were full and that he took off with the fuel selector on the right fuel tank. About 1/2 hour into the flight he reported to air traffic control that he was at 10,600 feet and had an anomaly with the airplane. The controller reported that over the next hour, the pilot could not determine the nature of the emergency. According to the controller, with each successive pilot transmission, the pilot's voice was sounding more uneven and his speech rate was slowly deteriorating. Thereafter, the pilot stopped responding to air traffic control. Radar track data of the airplane's flight revealed various circles and a zigzag-like pattern leading up to the area of the crash site. A witness who saw the airplane land stated that the airplane fully stalled just above a wheat field. The airplane struck the ground extremely hard and nosed over. When the witness arrived on scene the pilot was unconscious. The witness also noted that he did not notice any gas leaking from the wings nor did he smell gas. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed the fuel selector valve was on the right tank and the right fuel tank was empty. Very little damage was noted to the propeller. The pilot reported that he has no recollection of any of the events leading up to the accident after the initial position report.
Probable cause
The pilot's partial incapacitation during cruise flight and his subsequent inadequate fuel management, which resulted in fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10LA370
- Event ID
- 20100728X55008
- Case number
- WPR10LA370
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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. 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: c6b97e5d9588a3262c4bd66f2007f1bc53164d01db9e674221d6cd3e75514766; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:46:03.083Z.