SEA01LA170 · Cessna 182J
Cessna 182J · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Scott Valley Airport (A30) to Gold Beach, OR
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA01LA170
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 182J
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N3056F
- Operator
- Billy Joe C. Pyatt · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Scott Valley Airport (A30), Fort Jones, CATo Gold Beach, OR
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Proper alignment, not attained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he had never been into this airstrip before that was listed as a difficult approach, required advanced mountain skills and that instruction from an experienced mountain flying instructor should be obtained before landing there. The approach is through a narrow mountain canyon, following a river and circling a conical peak. The threshold to the airstrip is seen by the pilot about 1500 feet away. If the approach is stable, the pilot then makes a right turn through an approximate 100-foot wide opening in the trees. The pilot reported that when he made the right turn to final approach, the left wing was on the tree line and it was "really tight." The pilot increased the right banking turn, which put the aircraft on a collision course with the trees on the right side. The pilot banked to the left but the aircraft felt "sluggish. The pilot added power and raised the nose of the aircraft to try and go-around, however, the stall horn sounded and the pilot knew that he was not going to avoid a collision with the trees. The pilot then lowered the nose of the airplane, reduced power and leveled the wings. The aircraft then collided with the trees and subsequently the ground. The pilot reported that he had some mountain flying experience and that his passenger, a private pilot, had been into this airstrip the week before. The pilot reported no mechanical failures or malfunctions with the aircraft at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to attain proper alignment while on final approach and clearance from trees. The pilot's lack of total experience in this type of mountain flying operation was a factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA01LA170
- Event ID
- 20010913X01929
- Case number
- SEA01LA170
- 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: 50b071ad9957937b7d57fbb229e7deeb3bd7b68280ab09051149bc8af28d09f4; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:22:00.339Z.