SEA95FA093 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather while maneuvering
From South Cove Heliport (WA38) to Tonasket Municipal Airport (W01)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA95FA093
- 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
- 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 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N855DA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From South Cove Heliport (WA38), Monroe, WATo Tonasket Municipal Airport (W01), Tonasket, WA
- 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
- Maneuvering · turn to reverse direction
- 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 INSTRUMENT-RATED COMMERCIAL PILOT DEPARTED FROM GIG HARBOR, WASHINGTON, ON A PERSONAL FLIGHT TO MONROE, WASHINGTON. THE AIRPLANE WAS TOPPED OFF WITH FUEL. THE PILOT DID NOT RECEIVE A THOROUGH WEATHER BRIEFING FOR HIS INTENDED ROUTE OF FLIGHT, OR FILE A FLIGHT PLAN. THE AIRPLANE WAS NOT IFR EQUIPPED. AFTER PICKING UP HIS MOTHER AT MONROE, WASHINGTON, THE PILOT ATTEMPTED TO CROSS THROUGH THE CASCADE MOUNTAIN RANGE UNDERNEATH LOW LYING CLOUDS ALONG A MOUNTAIN PASS EN ROUTE TO A TOWN IN EASTERN WASHINGTON. NUMEROUS GROUND WITNESSES, SOME WHO WERE PILOTS, OBSERVED THE AIRPLANE FLYING THROUGH THE PASS ABOUT 100 TO 300 FEET ABOVE AN INTERSTATE HIGHWAY. THE WITNESSES REPORTED THAT THE AIRPLANE WAS FLYING JUST UNDER A LAYER OF FOG AND LOW CLOUDS, WHICH SHROUDED THE MOUNTAIN TOPS. ONE WITNESS OBSERVED THE AIRPLANE ENTER A CLOUD WHILE TURNING TO REVERSE DIRECTION. THE AIRPLANE IMPACTED A 75-FOOT-TALL TREE AND CAME TO REST IN STEEPLY RISING TERRAIN. NO EVIDENCE OF PRE-IMPACT MECHANICAL MALFUNCTIONS WAS FOUND.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S ATTEMPT TO CONTINUE VFR FLIGHT INTO INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS, AND HIS FAILURE TO MAINTAIN CLEARANCE WITH THE TERRAIN.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA95FA093
- Event ID
- 20001207X03553
- Case number
- SEA95FA093
- 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: 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: b173a0bf2c778364474b5d63aacd104ab9efd0868a0cd07b6b073a306d4cc3f4; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:47:26.161Z.