SEA98FA164 · North American SNJ-5C
North American SNJ-5C · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From Vancouver, WA to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA98FA164
- 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
- 2 · 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
North American SNJ-5C
- Aircraft type
- North American SNJ-5
- 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
- N766CA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Vancouver, WATo 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 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 › Altitude, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses at a residence on the airstrip observed the airplane make a low pass to the east along the east-west runway of the airstrip, followed by an 8-point roll, a 90-270 degree course reversal, and another low pass to the west with a pull-up into what was described as either a loop or cuban-eight maneuver. Just after attaining the top of this last maneuver, the airplane was rolled out with a heading change toward the south, where it was observed to be near level attitude before the left wing dropped and it disappeared from view due to obscuration by trees. Impact was heard shortly after the airplane disappeared from view. The airplane was located in a wooded area and was consumed by fire. One witness familiar with both the pilot and the airplane had noted a slight hesitation at the top of the loop or cuban-eight maneuver. He observed that the winds aloft were quite strong from the north, which may have caused the airplane to drift south of the east-west runway, so that terrain clearance (due to high trees bordering the south side of the runway) would have been reduced when the pilot was at the top of the maneuver. He noted that he heard no indications of a loss of engine power, although some other witnesses at the same location on the airstrip believed there had been a momentary power interruption before the crash. No evidence of preimpact mechanical deficiency or of pre-impact fire was observed during the on-scene investigation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate altitude during attempted low-level aerobatics.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA98FA164
- Event ID
- 20001211X10952
- Case number
- SEA98FA164
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1998-08-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ad0336a75036ab2c3a3f66a3ff234d390894a354818de82764963bb638da002a; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:27:52.608Z.