WPR24FA004 · Piper PA-44-180
Hillsboro Aero Academy Piper PA-44-180 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Portland Hillsboro Airport (HIO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR24FA004
- 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
- 2 · 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-44-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-44
- 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
- N8360K
- Operator
- Hillsboro Aero Academy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Portland Hillsboro Airport (HIO), Hillsboro, ORTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 42 years (built 1981)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor , pilot receiving instruction, and the pilot-rated passenger departed in the multi-engine airplane to conduct flight training. The training syllabus for the flight included a review of stalls, slow flight, steep turns and single-engine emergencies that included minimum control airspeed (Vmc) procedures.
The pilot-rated passenger, who was seated in the right rear seat, reported that the pilot receiving instruction was at the controls and was performing a Vmc maneuver when the loss of control occurred. At the start of the maneuver, at about 5300 ft mean sea level (msl), the pilot receiving instruction was flying the airplane. The passenger stated that during the maneuver the stall horn sounded, and the airplane almost immediately went “inverted to the left.” When the airplane entered a spin, the pilot receiving instruction verbalized the steps to return the airplane to level flight/recover from the spin and subsequently requested the flight instructor take over the flight controls. Numerous witnesses reported seeing the airplane spiraling as it disappeared from view.
Vmc is the speed below which aircraft directional control cannot be maintained if the critical engine fails. During a Vmc demonstration, power is reduced on the critical engine (left) and the airplane is recovered before the loss of directional control or a stall.
Postaccident examination of the recovered airframe and engines revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Flight control continuity was established from the cockpit to all primary flight controls. Numerous separations were noted within the flight control system with signatures consistent with overload separation or due to the recovery process. In addition, the passenger stated she was not aware of any mechanical issues with the airplane. The recorded ADS-B flight track data, recorded engine data, passenger’s statement, and witness interviews were consistent with the airplane having stalled and entered a spiral from which the pilots did not recover.
Probable cause
The pilot receiving instruction’s failure to maintain control of the airplane and the flight instructor’s inadequate supervision of the flight, which resulted in a stall/spin from which they were unable to recover.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR24FA004
- Event ID
- 20231004193187
- Case number
- WPR24FA004
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2023-10-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d6a71cfd45ef5ab55925f7d6970d5b5193255c44150f002c043091284e38ffc6; retrieved 2026-09-15T08:06:30.275Z.