SEA02FA005 · Piper PA-18
Piper PA-18 · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Madras Municipal Airport (S33) to Country Squire Airpark (S48)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA02FA005
- 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
- 2 · 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
Piper PA-18
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-18
- 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
- N7502K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Madras Municipal Airport (S33), Madras, ORTo Country Squire Airpark (S48), Country Squire, 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
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a visual flight rules (VFR) cross country flight, the student pilot encountered, and intentionally entered, instrument meteorological conditions. Although his passenger requested that he turn around, the pilot elected to attempt to reach his intended destination. Eventually the flight encountered a squall line with its associated rain, clouds, mist, and high winds. When he thought he was in the vicinity of the destination airport, the pilot, who was navigating primarily with a hand-held global positioning system (GPS), descended to just under the clouds. While maneuvering under very low ceiling in strong winds and heavy rain, he spotted a clearing in the forested terrain, and decided to land there. While he was on short final to the clearing, the pilot inadvertently allowed the aircraft to collide with a tree, after which it traveled another 285 feet before impacting the ground. The student pilot had not received the required solo cross-country CFI pre-flight endorsement, and there was no record of him acquiring a weather briefing prior to the initiation of the flight or during any intermediate stop.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from the trees while attempting to land in a field after entering an area of instrument meteorological conditions. Factors include low ceilings, rain, fog, strong winds, mountainous/hilly terrain, the pilot's intentional flight into an area of instrument meteorological conditions, and his failure to check forecast weather conditions prior to the flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA02FA005
- Event ID
- 20011025X02145
- Case number
- SEA02FA005
- 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: 71fde399033e5c85da49508db4165525938885a1bd95d205989d0c34f2c9303b; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:19:52.106Z.