SEA96GA129 · Cessna 182R
Cessna 182R · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Murphy Airport (1U3) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA96GA129
- 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
- Government
- 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 182R
- 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
- N6356N
- Operator
- Idaho Wing, Cap
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Murphy Airport (1U3), Murphy, IDTo 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot inadvertently flew into a box canyon or area of rising terrain, while performing low altitude reconnaissance on a Civil Air Patrol mission. When he determined that he could not outclimb the terrain or turn to the right, he made a left turn. The airplane collided with terrain across a slope of about 15 degrees and nosed over after initial impact. The pilot and two observers sustained minor injuries. The airplane was equipped with a cargo net, but the net was not used to secure cargo, which included a heavy steel instrument panel security lock device. The pilot used a hand-held radio to communicate with air carrier aircraft to facilitate rescue.
Probable cause
failure of the pilot to maintain clearance from mountainous terrain in a box canyon. The mountainous terrain and box canyon, limiting the pilot's ability to climb or maneuver and maintain sufficient altitude in the canyon, were related factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA96GA129
- Event ID
- 20001208X06101
- Case number
- SEA96GA129
- 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 1996-06-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4247b33f002561fcf662550a9b0518a524c0add80de3073d97682f15fc22959e; retrieved 2026-09-18T21:22:00.339Z.