SEA98LA162 · Cessna T337E
Cessna T337E · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From Portland Hillsboro Airport (HIO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA98LA162
- 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 T337E
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 337
- 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
- N78SC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Portland Hillsboro Airport (HIO)To 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Fuselage, seat › Slipped
- Miscellaneous, dowel/pin › Disengaged
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While attempting a touch-an-go landing, the pilot's seat locking pin disengaged, allowing the seat to slide to its full aft position. As the pilot tried to get his seat forward while holding onto the control yoke, the aircraft rolled to the left and impacted the terrain. During the investigation it was determined that AD 87-20-03 R2 (seat track visual inspection) had been signed off as complied with on 12/18/97, as part of the last annual inspection. The seat track and locking pin were also inspected by the FAA Airworthiness Inspector who responded to the accident, with no discrepancies found.
Probable cause
The disengagement of the pilot seat forward and aft movement locking pin, followed by the pilot's seat sliding to the rear of the seat track.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA98LA162
- Event ID
- 20001211X10958
- Case number
- SEA98LA162
- 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: 389e6ee585c8f7de77fd2d164bd61ee895a26e4b808849105e1f1c482e18007d; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:43:23.879Z.