SEA97LA169 · Weatherly 620B
Weatherly 620B · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From ID to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA97LA169
- 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
Weatherly 620B
- Aircraft type
- Weatherly 620
- 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
- N9022H
- Operator
- Owen J. Neeley · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From IDTo 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 › Aircraft weight and balance, exceeded
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After takeoff, the pilot was unable to climb, and the airplane crashed in a field just beyond the runway about 1 minute after becoming airborne. A post-accident examination of the aircraft's engine revealed no mechanical discrepancies. The FAA inspector assigned to the accident, who talked to the pilot, reported that the pilot took off with full fuel and a full hopper load; a gross weight estimate based on data obtained from the FAA, the pilot, and the aircraft manufacturer indicated that the airplane was approximately 1,830 pounds over its maximum certificated gross weight of 4,000 pounds (per the aircraft's FAA type certificate data sheet), and 330 pounds over the maximum takeoff gross weight for restricted-category operations, at takeoff. Density altitude at Idaho Falls, 40 nautical miles from and about 1,500 feet elevation below the accident area, was computed to be approximately 5,800 feet at the time, based on the hourly observation data being reported at the time.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight/planning preparation which resulted in the aircraft exceeding the maximum gross weight, and inability to climb. A factor was high density altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA97LA169
- Event ID
- 20001208X08511
- Case number
- SEA97LA169
- 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: 3e338b858ede8c2e4c38a9fc40d4f0367e43d6f48080ca8a52a967d6d2cbd50d; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:07:35.225Z.