SEA98LA131 · Cessna 170B
Cessna 170B · Accident: in flight collision with object during initial climb
From Friedman Memorial Airport (SUN) to Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (BOI)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA98LA131
- 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 170B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 170
- 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
- N3018A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Friedman Memorial Airport (SUN)To 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
- 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
- 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
- Tree(s)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot initiated takeoff from runway 13, a 6,600 foot paved runway. Shortly after the aircraft became airborne, it veered left, flew low, gained enough altitude to cross the highway and flew over the power lines east of the highway, then clipped the trees and went nose in into the subdivision. The investigation revealed that the pilot departed with 20 degrees of flaps. According to the aircraft owner's manual, the use of flaps is not recommended for crosswind takeoffs. The reported winds were from 200 degrees magnetic at 7 knots. The calculated density altitude at the airport at that time was 7,630 feet.
Probable cause
The pilot-in-command's failure to maintain directional control during takeoff. Contributing factors were the pilot-in-command's failure to follow procedures by the improper use of the flaps, high density altitude conditions, crosswind conditions and the tree.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA98LA131
- Event ID
- 20001211X10712
- Case number
- SEA98LA131
- 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: c2eec31ab42f4103614a6e062ffb004a19322d1497cd2f6b01525565ada18f52; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:24:08.646Z.