SEA95FA120 · Cessna 175A
Cessna 175A · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC) to Canyonlands Regional Airport (CNY)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA95FA120
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 175A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 175
- 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
- N6970E
- Operator
- Hoffman, Paul · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC), Salt Lake City, UTTo Canyonlands Regional Airport (CNY)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern base
- 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 collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Proper altitude, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT WAS PERFORMING A NIGHT VFR APPROACH INTO THE UNCONTROLLED AIRPORT WHEN THE AIRCRAFT IMPACTED THE TERRAIN ONE AND ONE HALF MILES FROM THE RUNWAY. A WITNESS OBSERVED THE AIRCRAFT IN THE TRAFFIC PATTERN AND INDICATED THE AIRPLANE GROUND TRACK APPROXIMATED THE TRAFFIC PATTERN FOR RUNWAY 21 EXCEPT THAT THE AIRCRAFT LOOKED LOWER TO THE GROUND THAN A NORMAL PATTERN. THIS WITNESS SAW THE AIRPLANE MAKE A LEFT TURN, SIMILAR TO A BASE TURN, AND DESCEND FROM VIEW BEHIND A RIDGE LINE. THE ACCIDENT FLIGHT OCCURRED ABOUT 16 HOURS AFTER THE START OF THE PILOT'S DUTY DAY. THE COMPANY OPERATIONS MANUAL STATES THAT DUTY ASSIGNMENTS SHOULD NOT EXCEED 14 HOURS. FLIGHT SERVICE HAD BRIEFED THE PILOT BEFORE HIS DEPARTURE THAT THE RUNWAY LIGHTS AT HIS DESTINATION WERE OUT OF SERVICE.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S FAILURE TO MAINTAIN PROPER ALTITUDE IN THE VISUAL FLIGHT RULES (VFR) TRAFFIC PATTERN. CONTRIBUTING TO THE ACCIDENT WERE THE PILOT'S FAILURE TO FOLLOW DISPATCH PROCEDURES, THE DARK NIGHT CONDITIONS, AND THE UNAVAILABILITY OF THE AIRPORT'S PILOT-CONTROLLED RUNWAY AND PRECISION APPROACH PATH INDICATOR (PAPI) LIGHTS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA95FA120
- Event ID
- 20001207X03804
- Case number
- SEA95FA120
- 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 1995-06-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 287f16fc8c229523e1525675f03bb62fd2e2bd75495c9236a4d0add2f79f515a; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:44:22.348Z.