SEA00FA132 · Cessna 180F
Cessna 180F · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Arlington Municipal Airport (AWO) to Felts Field (SFF)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA00FA132
- 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
- 3 · 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 180F
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 180
- 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
- N37GC
- Operator
- Bleasner, James S. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Arlington Municipal Airport (AWO), Arlington, WATo Felts Field (SFF), Spokane, WA
- 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 · cruise
- 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
- 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
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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 › VFR flight into imc, attempted
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument rated pilot and two passengers departed Arlington, Washington, in a Cessna 180F on a flight across the Cascade Mountains to Spokane, Washington. No flight plan had been filed and weather at the departure airport was 2,000-foot broken with lowering ceilings to the east. Raw radar data showed the aircraft tracking east-southeast with the last target recorded at 1410:01, at an estimated elevation of 5,200 feet and approximately 10 nautical miles east-southeast of the crash site. The aircraft impacted trees and +35 degree upsloping terrain in a wings level attitude, and the wreckage distribution was towards the north-northwest (299 degrees magnetic) at an elevation of approximately 3,850 feet MSL. Both propeller blade tips were separated from their respective propeller blades, and both blades displayed aftward bending and twisting deformation. Both wings separated at the fuselage wing root area. A logger located approximately one nautical mile north-northeast of the crash site at the time of the accident reported hearing an aircraft coming from the northwest circling back to the southwest followed by a 'backfire' or 'rifle-shot' like noise and then silence. The logger also reported poor visibility (overcast) with extremely cloudy/foggy conditions, and with heavy clouds/fog at elevations of 2,400 to 3,500 feet. He also reported that the tops of the ridges were fogged in from his observation point.'
Probable cause
The non-instrument rated pilot's attempted VFR flight in instrument meteorological conditions. Contributing factors were mountainous terrain and cloud, low ceiling and obscuration conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA00FA132
- Event ID
- 20001212X21597
- Case number
- SEA00FA132
- 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: 86dc1647de0beb524582ebbedd9ef77ea2ec442c0379177e68d4e05a54ca0c97; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:03:24.165Z.