GAA18CA559 · Piper PA34 200
Wayman Flight Training Piper PA34 200 · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From North Perry Airport (HWO) to North Perry Airport (HWO)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA18CA559
- 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 PA34 200
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA34
- 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
- N88AG
- Operator
- Wayman Flight Training
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Perry Airport (HWO), Hollywood, FLTo North Perry Airport (HWO), Hollywood, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 44 years (built 1974)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor in the multiengine airplane reported that the pilot under instruction was conducting a simulated instrument approach in visual flight rules conditions. The instructor placed the left engine fuel selector in the "off" position to simulate an engine out, and the pilot under instruction initiated the left engine failure procedure by placing the engine and propeller levers in a simulated feathered zero-thrust configuration. The instructor became distracted by traffic and failed to place the left engine fuel selector back to the "on" position.
With full flaps and the landing gear extended and while about 250 ft above ground level, the instructor terminated the simulated instrument approach and instructed the pilot to land visually; however, the airspeed decreased below safe limits, and he instructed the pilot to increase the airspeed. The pilot increased power on both engines; however, the left engine power did not increase, and the airplane rolled to the left about 45°. The instructor took the controls and applied right aileron and rudder, but the airplane settled down in a level attitude in a shallow lagoon on the left side of the runway.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the forward fuselage bulkheads.
The instructor reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot under instruction’s failure to maintain the twin-engine airplane’s minimum control airspeed with one engine inoperative and the flight instructor’s distraction when reconfiguring the airplane following the simulated engine failure, which resulted in no power being available to the left engine and a loss of control during landing when the throttles were advanced to increase airspeed.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA18CA559
- Event ID
- 20180911X54923
- Case number
- GAA18CA559
- 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: 79a6a784a3138362182b4cbefc890b6d66cf04006f0b1b0c1860362f70ec6ede; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:14:10.644Z.