SEA97LA162 · Cessna 320E
Cessna 320E · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Ogden Hinckley Airport (OGD) to Yellowstone Airport (WYS)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA97LA162
- 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 320E
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 320
- 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
- N3425Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ogden Hinckley Airport (OGD), Ogden, UTTo Yellowstone Airport (WYS)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot attempted to compensate for crosswind conditions during final approach in the twin-engine airplane with the use of power. He began to drift off the east (left) side of the runway, and he stated that the right engine did not respond to throttle inputs during the landing. He lost directional control of the airplane and impacted rough, grassy terrain off the edge of the runway. The landing gear collapsed and the airplane was substantially damaged. Examination of both propellers revealed damage consistent with applied power on the left engine, and no power on the right engine. An examination of the maintenance records revealed that the engine had recently been rebuilt by the manufacturer and installed on the airplane. Prior to the accident flight, it underwent an annual inspection and was operated for 6.2 hours during six flights with no problems noted. An examination of the right engine throttle controls and a functional test of the right engine did not reveal any evidence of preimpact mechanical discrepancies that would have resulted in a power loss or hesitation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during landing when asymmetric power was applied. A factor was the crosswind conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA97LA162
- Event ID
- 20001208X08504
- Case number
- SEA97LA162
- 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: da09de65edfa2d3d3f2d08c7fd9492012b5b0dc0f7e3a9c3db2aecf775712194; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:19:51.807Z.