SEA95FA018 · Cessna 172N
Kennewick Aircraft Cessna 172N · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From S22 · Hermiston, OR to Crater Lake-Klamath Regional Airport (LMT)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA95FA018
- 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
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172N
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N584WA
- Operator
- Kennewick Aircraft
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From S22 · Hermiston, ORTo Crater Lake-Klamath Regional Airport (LMT), Klamath Falls, OR
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- En route · cruise
- First occurrenceThe 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC); Tree(s)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, attempted
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PRIVATE PILOT, WHO WAS NOT INSTRUMENT RATED, RECEIVED AN ACCURATE WEATHER BRIEFING FOR A CROSS COUNTRY BUSINESS FLIGHT OVER MOUNTAINOUS TERRAIN AT NIGHT. DURING THE FLIGHT, THE WEATHER CONDITIONS WORSENED, AS FORECAST. THE PILOT WAS TOLD OF THE WORSENING CONDITIONS. HE REPORTED TO AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL (ATC) THAT HE WAS ENTERING OBSCURATION AND EVENTUALLY LOST GROUND CONTACT. THE REPORTED WEATHER CONDITIONS NEAR THE ACCIDENT SITE INDICATED THAT THE CLOUDS, SNOW, AND GUSTING WINDS EXISTED AT THE ALTITUDE THE AIRPLANE WAS FLYING. ATC PROVIDED VECTORS, BUT THE PILOT GRADUALLY DESCENDED AND VEERED TOWARD RISING TERRAIN. THE PILOT STATED THAT THE AIRPLANE THEN ENCOUNTERED A STRONG DOWNDRAFT AND THAT HE COULD NOT CLIMB FASTER THAN THE RISING TERRAIN. THE AIRPLANE IMPACTED A TREE NEAR THE 7,200 FOOT LEVEL OF A MOUNTAIN. THE PILOT WAS SERIOUSLY INJURED AND WAS RESCUED 22 HOURS AFTER THE ACCIDENT. THE PASSENGER WAS FATALLY INJURED. NO PRE-IMPACT MECHANICAL MALFUNCTIONS WERE REPORTED.
Probable cause
THE VFR PILOT'S ATTEMPT TO CONTINUE THE FLIGHT INTO INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS, AND HIS FAILURE TO MAINTAIN ALTITUDE/CLEARANCE WITH THE MOUNTAINOUS TERRAIN BELOW HIM. CONTRIBUTING TO THE ACCIDENT WAS A DOWNDRAFT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA95FA018
- Event ID
- 20001206X02656
- Case number
- SEA95FA018
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1994-11-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0c508681774328df914f84760385c06dffc2385af9e6ee603488d33d8f195e60; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:57:03.191Z.