SEA96LA035 · Cessna 172N
Mulino Air Cessna 172N · Accident: in flight collision with object during landing
From Portland Mulino Airport (4S9) to Pacific City State Airport (PFC)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA96LA035
- 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
- 0 · 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 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
- N738ME
- Operator
- Mulino Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Portland Mulino Airport (4S9), Mulino, ORTo Pacific City State Airport (PFC)
- 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
- Landing · aborted
- 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 object
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aborted landing, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of a Cessna 172N said that he made a normal approach to the 1,875 foot long runway during calm wind. Before landing, the airplane floated. The pilot said that after the airplane touched down and he lowered the nose wheel, the end of the runway was closer than he had expected. He initiated a go-around; however, the airplane's left main landing gear struck a cable, supported by 3 foot high wooden fence posts, which served as a barrier between the end of the runway and a paved road. The airplane then collided with a commercial building and a tree. The left flap was damaged, but the (undamaged) right flap was found in the retracted position. Witnesses around the airport reported the wind direction as southerly immediately following the accident. The Cessna 172N information manual indicated that in the event of a balked landing, 'climb, (and) reduce the flap setting to 20 degrees immediately after full power is applied.'
Probable cause
The pilot's delay in aborting the landing, which resulted in his failure to clear the perimeter fence. Factors relating to the accident were: the tailwind, and the pilot's failure to land at the proper touchdown point.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA96LA035
- Event ID
- 20001207X05084
- Case number
- SEA96LA035
- 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: b2a17b77bfa6e5a888c0f2ef5850f622a38ad54fb668371a5490b2ed823e364e; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:56:36.880Z.