SEA99LA077 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Norman Grier Field (S36) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA99LA077
- 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 172N
- 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
- N5120D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Norman Grier Field (S36), Covington, 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
- 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Go-around, improper
- Pilot in command › Recovery from bounced landing, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The solo student pilot, who reported his total time as 70 hours (including about 40 hours in make and model) reported he dropped in and bounced his landing, and was unable to get the airplane back onto the 3,002-foot-long runway by the halfway point. He then attempted a go-around, but failed to clear trees off the departure end of the runway. The student pilot reported no mechanical malfunction or failure was involved. An FAA inspector who examined the airplane after the accident found the airplane's flaps extended about 30 to 32 degrees; the balked landing procedure for the aircraft specifies that flaps be set to 20 degrees immediately upon initiation of a balked landing, then set to 10 degrees until obstacles are cleared.
Probable cause
The student pilot's inadequate recovery from a bounced landing, and his subsequent improper execution of the go-around procedure, resulting in collision with trees off the departure end of the runway. Factors included the student pilot's lack of total experience, and trees off the departure end.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA99LA077
- Event ID
- 20001212X18901
- Case number
- SEA99LA077
- 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: 10c4e16992c7fdaf34878fd0ea4c487ee2badc37508fec8273b9efad05775cb2; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:31:57.225Z.