SEA01FA060 · Cessna U206G
Cessna U206G · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Renton Municipal Airport (RNT) to Spokane International Airport (GEG)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA01FA060
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna U206G
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- CGISV
- Operator
- Robert O. Jensen · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Renton Municipal Airport (RNT), Renton, WATo Spokane International Airport (GEG), 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 · climb to 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The Canadian ATP rated pilot, who was reported to have in excess of 30,000 hours of flight experience, was attempting to fly the company's Cessna U206G from Seattle, Washington, to Calgary, Alberta. He obtained 3 weather briefings from Seattle Flight Service between 0823 and 1040 on the day of the accident. VFR flight north to Vancouver, British Columbia, and east across the Cascade Mountains was not recommended and the pilot chose a southerly route taking him south from Renton, WA, to the Columbia River, then east along the River to The Dalles, Oregon, and then northeast to Spokane, WA, where he planned to stop en route to Calgary, Alberta. The pre-departure weather briefing, as well as the in-flight briefing the pilot subsequently received, as well as the validity of the weather information provided (forecasts and advisories) was found to be correct and satisfactory. Although the pilot was IFR rated, he did not file an IFR flight plan. Additionally, he filed his flight plan as transponder Mode "C" equipped, but approaching Spokane advised the tower that "...we're having some transponder trouble here...." The pilot's son reported that the aircraft's transponder was questionable. Unable to utilize radar vectors approaching the Spokane area due to the lack of a transponder signal, the pilot radioed "...I'm going to see if I can work my way over to Coeur d'Alene or go back south and pick up a small airport...." The aircraft was observed heading north-northeast at an elevation of approximately 300 feet AGL by a witness driving on highway 27 (2,600 MSL) . The witness reported that the aircraft was under the fog line and then it disappeared into the fog heading toward Mica Peak. The aircraft impacted trees on a heading of approximately 015 degrees and in a slightly nose up attitude before impacting the rising terrain near Mica Peak at an elevation of 4,760 feet MSL. The witness reported weather conditions at his location as poor visibility, strong rain, low clouds and fog.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued flight into instrument meteorological conditions. Contributing factors were fog, low ceilings, drizzle/mist, rising terrain, and the non-availability of a functioning transponder.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA01FA060
- Event ID
- 20010321X00622
- Case number
- SEA01FA060
- 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, coordinates. 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: 898879f6270c9001d66870da620e1a946e34a98eddca7aeed82789bb3024b1e8; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:38:22.609Z.