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SEA98IA060 · Cessna 150L

9 Apr 1998 · Seattle, WA, United States

Cessna 150L · Incident: in flight collision with object during landing

From S42 · Silverdale, WA to Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (BOI)

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Event

NTSB case
SEA98IA060
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
Incident
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 150L

Aircraft type
Cessna 150
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
N39AA
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From S42 · Silverdale, WATo Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (BOI)
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 · aborted
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 object
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
Wire, transmission
DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
Minor

Cause areas

  • Pilot in command › Procedures/directives, not followed

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

While attempting to land long behind a departing Beech D-18, the aircraft encountered wake turbulence that caused it to suddenly roll to the left. Upon encountering the turbulence, the pilot aborted the landing and added full power while attempting to maintain aircraft control. By the time the pilot had reestablished the aircraft in wings-level flight, it had veered to the left and was heading almost 90 degrees from the runway. The pilot then climbed straight ahead, but the aircraft became entangled in electrical transmission lines just after passing the western boundary of the airport. It was later determined that, during the attempted go-around, the pilot had not repositioned the flaps to the 20 degree position called for in the Pilot's Operating Handbook.

Probable cause

The pilot's failure to reposition the flaps to the 20 degree position during a go-around, as called for in the Pilot's Operating Handbook. Factors include the pilot's decision to land long behind a departing aircraft, an encounter with wake turbulence during the landing sequence, and electric transmission lines in the vicinity of the airport.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record SEA98IA060
Event ID
20001211X09955
Case number
SEA98IA060
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: 8b96c44d7888dd9cbe6c4ba4e2e7018ad425819766c7c8a2890707072d825383; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:52:20.790Z.