SEA00LA041 · Cessna 177
Cessna 177 · Accident: hard landing
From 75S · Burlington, WA to Harvey Field (S43)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA00LA041
- 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 177
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N3433T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 75S · Burlington, WATo Harvey Field (S43)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on short-final to a full-stop landing, the wind shifted and the aircraft's rate of descent increased. The pilot corrected with partial power, but did not initiate the landing flare soon enough to keep the aircraft from hitting the runway hard enough to bounce back into the air. After ballooning back into the air, the aircraft started drifting sideways and touched down in an open grassy area alongside the runway. Although the power was at idle at that point, and the pilot had ample room to bring the aircraft to a stop on the grass, he elected to abort the landing. After adding power and trying to get the aircraft to lift off using two different flap settings, the pilot elected to abort the go-around because he thought he might not clear obstacles ahead. During his attempt to stop the aircraft on the wet grass, it slid into a residence just off to the side of the southeast end of the runway. After impacting the house, both the residence and the aircraft caught on fire.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper decision to attempt a go-around, then attempt to stop on the wet grass. Factors include variable winds, the pilot's inadequate compensation for the winds conditions, his inadequate recovery from a bounced landing, wet grass along the side of the runway, and a residence near the edge of the runway surface.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA00LA041
- Event ID
- 20001212X20434
- Case number
- SEA00LA041
- 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: 296f8e9edb9f4c33c32f10f02bed83c0c0f2675ccbfcb3857920caa9dce92dfb; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:43:24.407Z.