SEA98FA161 · Cessna 177
Cessna 177 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Wells Municipal Airport/Harriet Field (LWL) to UNKNOWN
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA98FA161
- 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
- Unknown
Cessna 177
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N2213Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wells Municipal Airport/Harriet Field (LWL), Wells, NVTo UNKNOWN
- 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 terrain/water
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft departed Wells, Nevada, at 2145 Pacific daylight time on August 2. The pilot did not file a flight plan, and no air traffic services were provided to the flight. The aircraft was reported missing on August 9 and a search was initiated. During the search, the Salt Lake Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) isolated a 1200 beacon code tracking northeast into the accident area between 11,600 and 11,800 feet. The last radar position in this series was recorded approximately 0203 mountain daylight time on August 3, at an altitude of 11,600 feet. The aircraft wreckage was found on August 12 at the 11,900-foot level on the west slope of 12,204-foot Mount Rearguard near Red Lodge, Montana, approximately 1 1/2 nautical miles northeast of the last Salt Lake ARTCC radar position. The accident site was roughly on a line from Wells to Minot, North Dakota, a potential intermediate destination listed in the FAA Alert Notice (ALNOT) on the missing aircraft. Evidence found at the accident site was consistent with a generally straight-and-level impact into the mountainside on a northeasterly track. No evidence of preimpact aircraft mechanical problems was found.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate altitude over, or clearance with, mountainous terrain during night visual flight rules flight. Factors included night lighting conditions and mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA98FA161
- Event ID
- 20001211X10951
- Case number
- SEA98FA161
- 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: 85e86d7d8c73f539cdb490d8aed8ec6526577a6824a9e999a7710b855ab98d5b; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:28:40.944Z.