SEA00LA034 · Cessna 182S
Cessna 182S · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Sacramento International Airport (SMF) to S98
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA00LA034
- 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 182S
- 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
- N374TC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sacramento International Airport (SMF), Sacramento, CATo S98
- 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
- En route · descent
- 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 encounter with weather
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was informed of icing conditions prior to entering the clouds. Although the aircraft is prohibited from flight into known icing conditions, the pilot elected to continue the flight into the icing conditions and land at his planned destination. Once the aircraft entered the clouds, it immediately began picking up ice, ultimately preventing it from attaining any significant climb rate and necessitating a nearly full-power approach at an airspeed 30 to 40 knots faster than the airplane's normal flaps-up landing speed. The pilot performed an instrument landing system (ILS) approach to an airport 5 miles from his destination, and after breaking out under the clouds, canceled instrument flight rules (IFR) and proceeded under visual flight rules (VFR) to the destination airport (whose runway is approximately 3,100 feet shorter than the runway to which the ILS approach is made.) The pilot reported that about 30-50 feet above ground level on final approach, he reduced power and extended flaps from 10 degrees to 20 degrees (the 'Inadvertent Icing Encounter' emergency procedure in the pilot's operating handbook specifies that wing flaps be left retracted.) The aircraft's speed immediately dropped, as did the left wing. The aircraft descended and the airplane landed hard, bouncing once before settling to the runway surface. The pilot reported that after he taxied to the ramp and inspected the airplane, he noted about 1/2 inch of ice on all flight surfaces.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to continue flight into known icing conditions, and his subsequent failure to maintain adequate airspeed on final approach, resulting in a hard landing. Factors included: icing conditions; the pilot's improper decision to continue to his planned destination from an ILS low approach rather than to execute the straight-in ILS approach to a full stop on a more suitable runway for his flight situation; and the pilot's failure to follow proper pilot's operating handbook procedures for an inadvertent icing encounter.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA00LA034
- Event ID
- 20001212X20324
- Case number
- SEA00LA034
- 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: ecc3e2a4d336bfcbfec2acf36415c82c0c16762acdc23e8781eaf29eb1661dad; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:29:05.278Z.