SEA98LA154 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From Portland Troutdale Airport (TTD) to Mountain Home Municipal Airport (U76)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA98LA154
- 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
- 1 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N835T
- Operator
- Bradly C. Kirkpatrick · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Portland Troutdale Airport (TTD), Troutdale, ORTo Mountain Home Municipal Airport (U76), Mountain Home, 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The passenger reported that as the flight continued, the clouds and fog increased around the aircraft. The passenger recalls that the pilot made altitude and heading changes to remain clear of the clouds. The passenger stated that when the accident occurred, she had her head down and eyes closed because she was airsick. The passenger stated that the engine sound never changed up to the time of the accident. Documentation of the accident site indicates that the aircraft collided with tree tops in steep mountainous terrain, and a level attitude, before coming to rest at the base of a tree stump. Wreckage was distributed along the length of the path for about 150 feet. Prior to departure, the pilot obtained a weather briefing that forecasted isolated thunderstorm activity, mountain obscuration and multiple layers of scattered and broken clouds. The pilot did not possess an instrument rating.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain terrain clearance and inadequate in-flight planning/decision. Contributing to the accident was mountain obscuration.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA98LA154
- Event ID
- 20001211X10731
- Case number
- SEA98LA154
- 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: abfe6067242dc8436869830e4595497778b6ed6ffac75374576bd2d2767e87f1; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:29:06.183Z.