SEA96LA115 · Cessna 172M
American Aviation Cessna 172M · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during takeoff
From Dawei Airport (TVY) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA96LA115
- 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 172M
- 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
- N9594V
- Operator
- American Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dawei Airport (TVY)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
- 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
- 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
- Stall/mush
- 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(cfi) › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Stall/mush, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that just after takeoff, the airspeed began decreasing, the stall warning horn sounded, and the airplane started sinking despite attempts at corrective action. The airplane impacted the ground beyond the departure end of the runway. Density altitude was 6,385 feet. A videotape, filmed by a rear-seat passenger, showed that the aircraft reached a pitch attitude of up to 24 degrees nose-high after takeoff. It also recorded a sound, resembling the stall warning horn, 42 seconds after start of takeoff roll (about 18 to 19 seconds after becoming airborne), and it recorded no significant change in engine noise pitch during the event. The airplane's electrical flap switch demonstrated improper mechanical operation 'due to normal wear' during postaccident functional testing. Investigation revealed that the pilot took off uphill to the south (average runway slope was 0.81 percent). The FAA's regional airport master record and the Utah state aeronautical chart wrongly indicated that the runway sloped uphill to the north, rather than to the south. The Airport/Facility Directory (A/FD) gave no runway slope data for the airport; the A/FD legend stated that the runway slope would be shown 'only when it is 0.3 percent or more.'
Probable cause
failure of the flight instructor (CFI) to ensure that adequate airspeed was maintained during initial climb after lift-off, which resulted in an inadvertent stall/mush. High density altitude was a related factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA96LA115
- Event ID
- 20001208X06111
- Case number
- SEA96LA115
- 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: 6caafe5162fa942c12ecb3ff245d092b14120b1013dcc10566e3cb0ac0cea241; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:46:26.043Z.