SEA97LA066 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: overrun during landing
From Walla Walla Regional Airport (ALW) to S95
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA97LA066
- 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 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N48965
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Walla Walla Regional Airport (ALW), Walla Walla, WATo S95
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Overrun
- 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) › Go-around, not performed
- Pilot in command(cfi) › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Proper touchdown point, not attained
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Remedial action, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certified flight instructor (CFI) and student pilot intended on landing on a 2,600-foot paved airstrip. During the final approach, the airplane was high on the glide path, so the CFI placed it into a slip. As the airplane approached the runway, it continued to float above it. The CFI elected not to perform a balked landing and attempted to land the airplane on the remaining runway length. The airplane touched down on the opposite end of the runway and the CFI applied the brakes. The airplane continued to roll beyond the end of the runway onto soft terrain. It impacted a dirt berm, nosed over, flipped inverted, and was substantially damaged. No preimpact mechanical malfunctions were reported by the pilot.
Probable cause
The certified flight instructor's improper in-flight decision to continue the landing attempt and not perform a go-around, her failure to attain the proper touchdown point, and her failure to apply proper remedial action. A contributing factor was the presence of a dirt bank at the end of the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA97LA066
- Event ID
- 20001208X07465
- Case number
- SEA97LA066
- 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 1997-02-26.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5a46ab3f239d0dfb245faf3a3b7744626854a06250756980b7cf8e287f0ea0ea; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:17:05.044Z.