SEA98FA179 · Cessna 172M
Aspen Air Cessna 172M · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Yanji Chaoyangchuan Airport (YNJ) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA98FA179
- 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
Cessna 172M
- 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
- CFZEY
- Operator
- Aspen Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Yanji Chaoyangchuan Airport (YNJ), LangleyTo 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A flight instructor, who checked the airplane out to the pilot for the night flight, reported that the pilot stated that he was going to stay in the local area (Canada) for a sight-seeing flight with a friend. When the aircraft did not return at the proposed time, a search was initiated. The aircraft was found the next morning, 17 miles south of the Canadian/U.S. border in a deep, narrow canyon located in the mountains of a wilderness area. The wreckage was found partially submerged in a river. The wreckage was positioned in a nearly vertical nose down attitude. Rearward crushing was noted to the entire length of the leading edges of both wings. During the post-accident investigation, no evidence was found to indicate a mechanical failure or malfunction.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control for undetermined reasons. Night conditions were a factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA98FA179
- Event ID
- 20001211X11163
- Case number
- SEA98FA179
- 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 1998-09-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4863a70afcf5ad2e2c1bd00384cd94621b1e18a5f79636060581e3ed9726bedb; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:25:52.657Z.