SEA02LA090 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident: in flight collision with object during initial climb
From Carey Airport (U65) to Carey Airport (U65)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA02LA090
- 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 172
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N7225A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Carey Airport (U65), Carey, IDTo Carey Airport (U65), Carey, ID
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that shortly after takeoff the airplane experienced a loss of lift "...and started to decelerate." The pilot enriched the mixture and lowered the nose, however, the airplane continued to descend and subsequently collided with trees and terrain approximately 1,000 feet beyond the departure end of the runway. A witness to the accident reported that he heard the accident airplane taking off from the Carey Airport. He reported that shortly thereafter, he heard what sounded like "...a tree shredding machine and looked out the window and saw the aircraft falling vertically and hitting the ground..." The Airport field elevation is 4,783 feet MSL. The winds at the time of the accident were from 250 degrees at 10-15 knots. The reported temperature was approximately 80 degrees Fahrenheit. The pilot and three passengers combined weight was approximately 690 pounds, and the airplane contained approximately 156 pounds of fuel. Post-accident examination of the airplane revealed no evidence of a mechanical malfunction or failure.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from trees during takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA02LA090
- Event ID
- 20020612X00858
- Case number
- SEA02LA090
- 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: ec919481f5636e7198f88f9239038bbe9fff07ff73b1bf5e0db4959a3606b916; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:42:49.649Z.