SEA96FA022 · Cessna 152
Valley Hi Aviation Cessna 152 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Provo Municipal Airport (PVU) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA96FA022
- 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 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
- N6392Q
- Operator
- Valley Hi Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Provo Municipal Airport (PVU), UTTo not recorded
- 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
- 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 › Suicide, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
At about 1430 mst, a jury found that the pilot was guilty of a 'pyramid scheme.' About 1/2 hour later, he arrived at the airport and rented a Cessna 152, then departed on a flight. A lineman, who saw the pilot immediately before his departure, described him as 'in a hurry' and 'curt in his manner.' At about 1515 mst, the airplane was seen by ground witnesses to fly into the base of an upsloping mountain range, next to power lines about five miles east of the airport. Individuals close to the pilot indicated that he was apprehensive about the possibility of going to jail, and that 'since this was a second offense for the particular crime, he felt that if convicted, he would spend some years in jail.' The Utah State Medical Examiner ruled the manner of death as 'suicide.' Toxicology tests of the pilot's blood showed a low level (0.006 mcg/ml) of Tetrahydrocannabinal Carboxylic Acid (THCCOOH, inactive metabolite of marijuana) in his blood and 0.015 mcg/ml of THCCOOH in his urine.
Probable cause
pilot suicide (intentional in-flight collision with rising terrain). A factor relating to the accident was: pilot anxiety/apprehension.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA96FA022
- Event ID
- 20001207X04921
- Case number
- SEA96FA022
- 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: 42a31e97397543893b816e8018b5a1f412087fff73decc4e41e65d1e4e1f754d; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:31:28.195Z.