SEA00LA126 · Cessna 120
Cessna 120 · Accident: on ground/water collision with object during landing
From Helena Regional Airport (HLN) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA00LA126
- 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 120
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 120
- 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
- N2146N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Helena Regional Airport (HLN), Helena, MTTo 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 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 · landing roll
- 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
- On ground/water collision with object
- 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 › Altitude, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported in a telephonic interview that he and his son were on a local sightseeing flight operating approximately 1,000 feet above ground when the aircraft encountered a strong downdraft. Concerned that the aircraft might make contact with terrain, the pilot maneuvered over a dirt road. Although the pilot reported no mechanical problem with the aircraft or its powerplant, the aircraft continued to descend until touchdown on the road. During the landing roll, the right main landing gear and right wing impacted a fence post and the right wheel separated from the strut. The aircraft then veered right off the road nosing over as it passed into a ditch.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain sufficient altitude to avoid contact with the ground. Contributing factors were the downdraft conditions and the fence post.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA00LA126
- Event ID
- 20001212X21606
- Case number
- SEA00LA126
- 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: a337ecdbe6bc25f441e94460fdd0d4acd2a83e741960396b6f50cc8d18fa8571; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:44:27.964Z.