SEA97LA063 · Maule M-5-180
Maule M-5-180 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Yuba County Airport (MYV) to Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (BOI)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA97LA063
- 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
Maule M-5-180
- Aircraft type
- Maule M-5
- 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
- N5652W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Yuba County Airport (MYV), Marysville, CATo Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (BOI), Boise, ID
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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 › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Ground loop/swerve, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a VFR flight over an overcast, the pilot decided to descend through what appeared to be a hole in the clouds. During the descent, the aircraft entered instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) and began picking up ice. About two minutes after entering IMC, the aircraft broke out of the clouds with about one-half inch of clear ice on its exterior. Because the aircraft's flight characteristics were changed by the accumulation of ice, the pilot decided to land at the nearest airport. Because of the ice build-up, the pilot elected to fly final faster than normal, and the aircraft ultimately touched down long and fast. While trying to slow the aircraft during the landing roll, the pilot failed to maintain directional control, and the aircraft exited the runway and rolled through tall sagebrush.
Probable cause
failure of the pilot to maintain directional control of the aircraft, while landing. Factors relating to the accident included: the pilot's improper inflight decision to attempt a descent through what appeared to be a hole in the clouds, his inadvertent flight into icing conditions in the clouds, airframe icing, and tall vegetation growing in the vicinity of the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA97LA063
- Event ID
- 20001208X07462
- Case number
- SEA97LA063
- 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: 02b3883316ab648cf1bb664b6aadf1c3e6ea42b76eb57bdddaa9522582f5dce0; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:18:45.228Z.