WPR15LA265 · Aero Commander 680 E
Aero Commander 680 E · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Emmett Municipal Airport (S78) to Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (BOI)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15LA265
- 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
Aero Commander 680 E
- Aircraft type
- Aero Commander 680
- 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
- N222JS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Emmett Municipal Airport (S78), Weiser, IDTo Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (BOI), Boise, ID
- Aircraft age
- About 56 years (built 1959)
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was conducting a personal flight. He reported that he did not recall what happened the day of the accident. One witness, who was former pilot, reported that he saw the airplane fly over his house and that the engines sounded as if they were "out of sync." A second witness, who lived about 5 miles away from the airport, reported that she saw the airplane flying unusually low. She added that the engines sounded terrible and that they were "popping and banging." A third witness, who was holding short of the runway waiting to take off, reported that he saw the airplane approaching the runway about 75 ft above ground level (agl). He then saw the airplane descend to about 50 ft agl and then climb back to about 75 ft agl, at which point the airplane made a hard, right turn and then impacted terrain.
Although a postaccident examination of both engines revealed no evidence of a mechanical failure or malfunction that would have precluded normal operation, the witnesses' described what appeared to be an engine problem. It is likely that one or both of the engines was experiencing some kind of problem and that the pilot subsequently lost airplane control. The pilot reported in a written statement several months after the accident that, when he moved the left rudder pedal back and forth multiple times after the accident, neither the torque tubes nor the rudder would move, that he found several of the rivets sheared from the left pedal, and that he believed the rudder had failed. However, postaccident examination of the fractured rivets showed that they exhibited deformation patterns consistent with overstress shearing that occurred during the accident sequence. No preimpact anomalies with the rudder were found.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airplane control following an engine problem for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination of both engines and the rudder revealed no malfunctions or anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15LA265
- Event ID
- 20150923X41349
- Case number
- WPR15LA265
- 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: 8a34e6661124685cbf13fd30ec47b239f7929420b158f7274ee82dd1c0e574b6; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:48:32.293Z.