SEA98LA189 · Cessna 172D
Cessna 172D · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From an unrecorded airport to SPANGLE, WA
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA98LA189
- 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 172D
- 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
- N2479Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo SPANGLE, WA
- 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- 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 › Airspeed, not attained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that while attempting to execute a soft field takeoff on a private, non-identified, turf airstrip, he pulled the aircraft's nose up prematurely. The aircraft then settled back to the surface and the pilot allowed the aircraft to accelerate before pulling the nose up a second time. On this occasion, all three wheels left the surface. Immediately thereafter, while still in ground effect, the aircraft veered left off of the takeoff surface. The pilot reported that he could not maintain directional control, and the aircraft went through a barbed-wire fence, striking several fence posts in the process. Density altitude at the closest weather reporting station was approximately 4,792 feet.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to attain adequate airspeed during liftoff from a soft field takeoff. Factors include high density alttiude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA98LA189
- Event ID
- 20001211X11179
- Case number
- SEA98LA189
- 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: d426dd801a09f54e90f4836b22d96a20ebfebc07e361e028979661fb8a9938bf; retrieved 2026-09-22T16:37:00.478Z.