SEA00LA040 · Cessna 310R
Cessna 310R · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Great Falls International Airport (GTF) to Glacier Park International Airport (FCA)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA00LA040
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 310R
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 310
- 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
- N87338
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Great Falls International Airport (GTF), Great Falls, MTTo Glacier Park International Airport (FCA), Kalispell, MT
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Missed approach, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he had been cleared for and had flown the VOR runway 30 approach. Upon his arrival at the missed approach point, he did not have the runway or the airport environment in sight. He said he had heard that an aircraft that had preceded him to the airport had reported the weather to be better to the south and west of the airport, and had reported seeing the airport from the west side of the airport. The pilot stated that after he arrived at the missed approach point and did not have the runway or airport environment in sight, he continued to the west side of the airport and made a left turn, for a 'downwind for runway 02,' saying he intended to use the localizer frequency to help him find the runway. He then tuned the number one navigation receiver to the localizer frequency for the ILS runway 02 approach. He said he thought a left turn would align the aircraft with runway 02 and, if he did not see the runway, the left turn would place him back near the missed approach point and he would begin the missed approach from that point. The pilot told FAA inspectors that he did not acquire the runway or airport environment visually. He said the number two navigation receiver was tuned to the VOR frequency. He said he did not remember centering the CDI 9course deviation indicator) for navigation to the VOR for the missed approach, nor does he remember the localizer needle (navigation receiver number one) being centered. He offered no explanation as to how the aircraft wound up about eight miles north of the airport on the mountainside.
Probable cause
Failure of the pilot-in-command to follow the prescribed instrument approach missed approach procedure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA00LA040
- Event ID
- 20001212X20433
- Case number
- SEA00LA040
- 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: 63e00d269406d7f3210f826902a1c482611d2be9c5bc90e3b6586c2651a152ae; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:49:50.243Z.