SEA96LA067 · Cessna 182P
Cessna 182P · Accident: ditching en route
From Seattle Paine Field International Airport (PAE) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA96LA067
- 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 182P
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N41MG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Seattle Paine Field International Airport (PAE), Everett, WATo 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
- En route · descent
- 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
- Ditching
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he heard a 'significant bang' and a 'clunky metallic sound' while cruising VFR above mountains and a broken cloud deck at 9,500 feet above mean sea level. He reported to ATC that the engine then 'quit.' He stated that he initiated an emergency descent through clouds, broke out of the clouds about 400 feet above the ground, and ditched the airplane in a shallow river because of unsuitable mountainous terrain surrounding the river. The airplane flipped over during the ditching and was substantially damaged. A detailed examination of the engine did not reveal any evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunctions or deficiencies. No evidence was found to support fuel exhaustion or carburetor icing. About 2-1/2 months after the accident, the pilot was involved in another presumed ditching in which he reported to ATC that the engine had quit while cruising VFR on a personal flight. The airplane was not found. The pilot disappeared after the presumed ditching, and later turned himself in to local authorities. He has since plead guilty to charges of False Distress Signals and Mail Fraud.
Probable cause
a ditching of the airplane for undetermined reason(s).
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA96LA067
- Event ID
- 20001208X05483
- Case number
- SEA96LA067
- 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: b9ace31ae7cbc5d73e79d2890768f97539cb00f9ef96c63322128e100003361d; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:57:06.346Z.