SEA00LA022 · Cessna 175
Cessna 175 · Accident: hard landing
From Indian Creek US Forest Service Airport (S81) to 66U · DEADWOOD DAM, ID
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA00LA022
- 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 175
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 175
- 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
- N7164M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Indian Creek US Forest Service Airport (S81), INDIAN CREEK, IDTo 66U · DEADWOOD DAM, ID
- 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
- Landing
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Pilot in command › Remedial action, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that after clearing trees on final approach, the airplane began to settle, then entered a rapid sink rate and touched down hard on all three landing gear. The airplane bounced twice, and on the third touchdown, the nose gear strut collapsed and the airplane slid on its nose before coming to rest. The pilot stated he believed that the airplane 'entered a wind sheer [sic] or down draft' after clearing the trees on final. Data on the airstrip obtained from the Internet and attributed to the FAA indicate that the airstrip (which is located in remote and rugged terrain) is maintained for government use only by the U.S. Forest Service, is recommended for emergency use only, and that only light planes piloted by experienced pilots should attempt to use the airstrip. The pilot-in-command, a private pilot, had accumulated approximately 193 hours total flight time (including about 2 hours in make and model) and did not have a current flight review. The landing attempt was not due to an emergency, but was made (according to the second pilot) 'due in part to the good weather conditions and light fuel load.'
Probable cause
An improper in-flight decision by the pilot-in-command to attempt a landing at a confined-area airstrip which was beyond his piloting capabilities, and his subsequent failure to take adequate remedial action upon encountering a downdraft. Related factors were the downdraft and lack of total experience in confined area landings.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA00LA022
- Event ID
- 20001212X20179
- Case number
- SEA00LA022
- 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: 21e5515f2141849d48027410dd20b0f87995a21bdcd28e426189d9aa2474f297; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:41:29.577Z.