SEA00FA030 · Cessna 140A
Cessna 140A · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From CROWLEY RANCH, OR to Caldwell Executive Airport (EUL)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA00FA030
- 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
- 1 · 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 140A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 140
- 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
- N5347C
- Operator
- Tommy W. Ballard · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From CROWLEY RANCH, ORTo Caldwell Executive Airport (EUL), Caldwell, 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 terrain/water
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was substantially damaged and the pilot fatally injured when the airplane collided with terrain in an isolated area of the state. It was believed to have departed a ranch, about twelve miles southwest, in what was described as 'heavy snow conditions.' No flight plan was filed for the flight, and there was no report of the pilot receiving a weather briefing in preparation for the flight. The nearest aviation weather reporting point was about 70 miles from the crash site. An airmet for mountain obcuration in the area was in effect at the time of the accident. Toxicological testing was performed by the FAA Toxicological laboratory. Blood, brain, and urine toxicological samples were positive for amphetamine, and methamphetamine.
Probable cause
The pilot-in-command's failure to maintain terrain clearance. Factors include meteorological conditions obscuring the pilot's visibility and incapacitation due to illegal substances.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA00FA030
- Event ID
- 20001212X20317
- Case number
- SEA00FA030
- 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 1999-12-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c7763d2414b11c996cb3527d1b566a995716260d7bd914d12837e5300831c401; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:35:21.212Z.