SEA01LA096 · Cessna 180A
Cessna 180A · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during landing
From 9S1 · Roche Harbor, WA to Mercer Island, WA
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA01LA096
- 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
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 180A
- 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
- N9732B
- Operator
- Richard M. Pattison · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 9S1 · Roche Harbor, WATo Mercer Island, 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
- 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 terrain/water
- 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 › Visual lookout, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After circling the area to observe the water conditions, the pilot executed a water landing in his float-equipped airplane. He touched down in relatively calm conditions, but almost immediately encountered a large wave/swell that he had not noticed from the air. The aircraft was momentarily launched back into the air, and the pilot applied full power for a go-around. Although the pilot initiated a go-around, the aircraft had already slowed to a point where it could not maintain flight. It therefore dropped back to the surface of the water with sufficient force to cause substantial damage to the aircraft structure.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate visual lookout during an approach and landing in open water. Factors include a large wave/swell at the location where the pilot elected to land his float-equipped airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA01LA096
- Event ID
- 20010522X00999
- Case number
- SEA01LA096
- 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: 7c3e3b6ce80198eb9867480dd12d1f161b1858cd76a18d1c278f7fbe876d6174; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:58:42.264Z.