NTSB CAROL · Event
Event SEA71AS020
Aircraft involved
Historical record (pre-1982)
NTSB recorded this accident in the pre-1982 coded-field schema — structured fields rather than free-text narrative. Decoded codes use established NTSB single-letter taxonomies; cause factors remain verbatim pending the Form 6120.4 codebook lookup.
Aircraft
PIPER PA11 · N4899M
Damage
Destroyed
Craft type
Airplane
Classification
Accident
Light condition
Dawn
Weather
VMC
Phase of flight
C8
Operator type
D
Kind of flying
B0
Weather at impact
Sky
CLEAR
Wind
110° / 17 kt
Temp
65° F
Aircraft history
Serial number
00000011-420
Total time
2,000 hrs
Pilot
Certificate
Commercial — instrument
Total hours
1,220
Age
48
Probable cause (from PRE1982.MDB)
COURSE,LOST FLYING SPEED.PLT AND ACFT NOT RCVRD.
Investigator remarks
T/O TOWARD BLIND CANYON,LTD TURN SPACE.REVERSED
Cause factors
- 64/A/29 A PILOT IN COMMAND INADEQUATE PREFLIGHT PREPARATION AND/OR PLANNING Cause — pilot/personnel action
- 64/A/16 A PILOT IN COMMAND FAILED TO OBTAIN/MAINTAIN FLYING SPEED Cause — pilot/personnel action
- 82/J/M J WEATHER DOWNDRAFT,UPDRAFTS Joint cause
- 83/J/I J TERRAIN HIGH OBSTRUCTIONS Joint cause
- 88/J/88 J MISCELLANEOUS ACTS,CONDITIONS AIRCRAFT CAME TO REST IN WATER Joint cause
Decoded against the NTSB Form 6120.4 cause-factor codebook (ct_Pre1982 table). Each row shows the raw triplet, modifier (Cause / Factor / etc.), category, and specific code.
Source: NTSB pre-1982 historical archive. Docket
3 2764.
Source file
NTSB_1970_3_2764.txt.
Modern CAROL record on
data.ntsb.gov ↗.
Beyond the agency record
Search this event elsewhere.
Pre-filled searches into the sources where news + community discussion of aviation events lives. External sources are reported, not agency. Treat them as signal that something happened, not as fact about what happened.
Entity-clustered aviation events in the press — last 24 hr + 30-day archive.
Official agency record + docket.
Investigative docket: factual reports, photos, transcripts.
Long-running aviation incident database (Flight Safety Foundation).
Community NTSB synthesis blog — often has photos and witness reports.
Gold-standard aviation incident blog.
Aviation industry news search.
GA pilot forum — informed but rumor-prone.
GA pilot subreddit search.
Tail-number page — flight history (free tier limited).
AOPA Air Safety Institute search.
Mainstream press coverage. Recent events only.
Privacy-preserving news search.
External links open in a new tab. We don't ingest their content; we deep-link search queries.
Related research
What the literature says.
Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type. Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.
Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗