SEA99TA010 · Cessna TR182
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Cessna TR182 · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From S98 · Kennewick, WA to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA99TA010
- 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
- Government
- 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 TR182
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N756YE
- Operator
- U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From S98 · Kennewick, 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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 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
- Wire, static
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Approximately 4 hours into a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFand WS) low-level waterfowl survey flight along the Columbia River, while flying down river (eastbound), the aircraft struck a static line on a power line crossing the river and crashed into the river. The pilot escaped the aircraft with serious injuries, but two USFand WS employees aboard the aircraft, acting as observers for the waterfowl survey, did not escape the submerged aircraft and drowned. The pilot reported that at the time of the wire strike, he saw the transmission lines and towers and was climbing to clear the transmission lines, but that he was unaware of the smaller-diameter static line's presence above the transmission lines and did not see it. The aircraft struck the static line 122 feet above the surface. The static line, the highest wire on the structure, was not marked according to current FAA standards. An FAA aerial survey of the crossing conducted after the accident revealed that while an adjacent power line crossing approximately 1/4 mile east of the accident crossing was conspicuously marked and lighted, the lines which were struck were very difficult to see even in good visibility conditions.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate altitude and/or clearance over a power line crossing the river, resulting in collision with a static wire at the top of the crossing structure. Factors included the static wire, and inadequate marking of the static wire.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA99TA010
- Event ID
- 20001211X11503
- Case number
- SEA99TA010
- 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: 44fcb6d7388534236dcb3888301d62f5d53d39bd03200c00c77e42291ced6cf8; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:36:49.980Z.