"Ben Hallert" wrote in message
...or that could be impact damage. 500 feet seems low, but that's what
the corridor allows. 30 degrees of flaps... I speculate that slow
flight was being demonstrated. For some reason, the plane slowed past
the stall point at an angle and entered a spin, then had insufficient
altitude to recover.

Maybe not slow flight. An instructor would, probably, not do this on a
sightseeing tour and without sufficient recovery altitude. But, speculation
on that aside, I often use a notch or two of flaps when doing a sightseeing
tour. Gives a bit more nose down attitude. Maybe it was that.

moo