SEA96LA108 · Cessna 120
Cessna 120 · Accident: nose over during takeoff
From Flying R Ranch Airport (WA49) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA96LA108
- 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 120
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 120
- 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
- N2965N
- Operator
- Lynn L. Harden · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Flying R Ranch Airport (WA49)To 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
- Takeoff · rejected takeoff
- 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
- Nose over
- 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 takeoff, delayed
- Pilot in command › Brakes(normal), excessive
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot attempted to take off from a 2,471-foot-long rough turf runway. He reported that the takeoff attempt went normally until the airplane reached a speed of 40 to 45 MPH and that the airplane did not accelerate beyond that speed. Unable to accelerate or to get airborne by the point on the runway at which he was accustomed to doing so, the pilot aborted the takeoff and initiated braking. The tailwheel-equipped airplane nosed over onto its back about 200 feet short of the runway end. After the accident, an FAA inspector computed the airplane to be 32 pounds over maximum gross weight. The U.S. Government and Washington state airport directories indicated that the unattended airport was closed form October 1 through June 1. Density altitude at the airport was calculated to be 3,424 feet.
Probable cause
the pilot's delay in aborting the takeoff, and his excessive use of brakes while decelerating the airplane during the aborted takeoff. Factors relating to the accident were: the pilot's loading the airplane above its maximum gross weight, high density altitude, and the rough surface of the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA96LA108
- Event ID
- 20001208X06104
- Case number
- SEA96LA108
- 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: e037b93ecc344c242733c523d8326d8fe9523059c4c3f043e69d5325e5ae723b; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:47:42.534Z.