SEA00LA051 · Weatherly 620B
Weatherly 620B · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From Ken Jernstedt Airfield (4S2) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA00LA051
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Weatherly 620B
- Aircraft type
- Weatherly 620
- 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
- N9040V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ken Jernstedt Airfield (4S2), Hood River, ORTo not recorded
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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 · aerial application
- 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 object
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Odell, OR, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses reported that after making a series of spray passes over a block of pears in an east-west direction, the pilot made a north-to-south spray pass over the eastern boundary of the pear block. This pass was toward sharply rising terrain. On the north-to-south pass, the aircraft struck a tree near the south end of the orchard and began coming apart. It then struck more trees as it climbed, losing additional parts of its wing, and subsequently impacted the ground. A post-crash fire erupted immediately upon ground impact and consumed the forward portion of the airplane including the cockpit area. One witness reported that the aircraft's engine appeared to be running at full power until ground impact. An autopsy on the pilot determined the cause of his death to be 'asphyxia due to inhalation of products of combustion', noting 'no evidence of significant anatomic injury.'
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain sufficient altitude over, or clearance with, a tree. Factors contributing to the occurrence of the accident were the tree and sharply rising terrain. A factor contributing to the severity of the accident was a post-crash fuel fire.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA00LA051
- Event ID
- 20001212X20737
- Case number
- SEA00LA051
- 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: 08888daf6767aa06c580e8e0c8b385751cbfbc7d16cac686cea4d8d9d58139f5; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:24:20.526Z.