SEA96LA056 · Cessna 172P
Cessna 172P · Accident: overrun during landing
From King County International Airport - Boeing Field (BFI) to Pangborn Memorial Airport (EAT)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA96LA056
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 172P
- 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
- N52264
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From King County International Airport - Boeing Field (BFI), Seattle, WATo Pangborn Memorial Airport (EAT), Wenatchee, 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- Overrun
- 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 › Raising of flaps, not performed
- Pilot in command › Short field landing/procedure, not followed
- Pilot in command › Wrong runway, selected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot diverted from his original destination due to weather conditions at the destination airport. The runway at the selected alternate was 1,800 feet long with a 1.3 percent down grade from west to east. Winds at the time were calm. The pilot did not follow the landing procedure specified in an onboard airport guide, directing landings uphill to the west in calm winds; instead, he initiated a landing downhill to the east. The airplane's pilot operating handbook (POH) indicated a 530-foot short-field landing ground roll on a level field under conditions of gross weight, pressure, and temperature approximating those of the accident flight; total distance to land after clearing a 50 foot obstacle was about 1265 feet. Subsequently, the airplane ran off the east end of the runway, encountered snow, and nosed over despite heavy braking attempts by the pilot. During a postaccident examination, the flaps were found in an extended position. The POH stated that during a short-field landing, flaps should be retracted during the landing roll for maximum braking effectiveness.
Probable cause
the pilot's selection of the wrong runway for landing, by not observing a procedure to land uphill during calm wind conditions, and his subsequent failure to retract the flaps during landing roll, as recommended by the airplane's short-field landing procedure. The downhill slope of the landing runway was a related factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA96LA056
- Event ID
- 20001208X05325
- Case number
- SEA96LA056
- 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: 91c0414b2b898b5ab12b258f7aab81121e8e1b4618db96588237a7195041cb59; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:53:53.983Z.