SEA93FAMS1 · Cessna 182L
Cessna 182L · Accident: missing aircraft
From Bellingham International Airport (BLI) to Eliza Island Airport (WA93)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA93FAMS1
- 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
- Unknown
Cessna 182L
- 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
- N3106R
- Operator
- Davis, James, O. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bellingham International Airport (BLI), Bellingham, WATo Eliza Island Airport (WA93), ELIZA ISLAND, 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
- Unknown
- 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
- Missing aircraft
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT OBTAINED A WEATHER BRIEFING FOR A FLIGHT FROM PORTLAND, OREGON, TO BELLINGHAM, WASHINGTON AND VFR FLIGHT WAS NOT RECOMMENDED. SEVERAL TRIPS WERE COMPLETED BETWEEN BELLINGHAM AND ELIZA ISLAND (10 MILES TO THE SOUTH). THE AIRCRAFT DEPARTED BELLINGHAM AT 2128 HOURS DURING DARK NIGHT VARIABLE METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS CARRYING CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT AND A PASSENGER ON ITS LAST KNOWN FLIGHT. WITNESSES ON ELIZA ISLAND REPORTED OBSERVING THE LIGHTS OF AN AIRCRAFT AT 2149 HOURS. THE WITNESSES REPORTED THAT THE LIGHTS WERE OBSERVED TO DESCEND RAPIDLY AND THEN EXTINGUISH. NO MAJOR IDENTIFYING WRECKAGE WAS RECOVERED. THE AIRCRAFT DAMAGE AND INJURY CLASSIFICATION ABOVE ARE PRESUMED.
Probable cause
UNDETERMINED.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA93FAMS1
- Event ID
- 20001211X13259
- Case number
- SEA93FAMS1
- 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 1993-08-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 20552ae1217ebafb00db9172f61ec8c49ac03419962ed66d687e0321cd699c4f; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:25:16.686Z.