DEN82FA197 · Cessna 150L
Cessna 150L · Accident: ditching during landing
From Penticton to Vancouver
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN82FA197
- 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
- 0
- 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 150L
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 150
- 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
- CGICK
- Operator
- Jaroslaw C. Ambrozuk · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From PentictonTo Vancouver
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Ditching
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
AFTER A FLIGHT FROM VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA TO PENTICTON, CANADA, THE PILOT FILED A FLIGHT PLAN FOR A RETURN TRIP AND DEPARTED AT ABOUT 1900 MDT. LATER, THE AIRCRAFT CRASHED AT NIGHT IN THE LITTLE BITTERROOT LAKE, LOCATED ABOUT 25 MILES WEST OF KALISPELL, MT. THE PILOT EGRESSED FROM THE PLANE, BUT THE PASSENGER WAS INCAPACITATED AFTER IMPACT AND DROWNED WHEN THE PLANE SANK. THE PILOT LEFT THE ACCIDENT SITE AND WAS NOT LOCATED. HOWEVER, HE MADE 2 TELEPHONE CALLS (FROM NEW YORK AND TEXAS) TO A FRIEND IN CANADA AND INDICATED THE LOCATION OF THE CRASH SITE. THE AIRCRAFT WAS LOCATED IN 255 FT OF WATER AND WAS RECOVERED WITH THE PASSENGER. AN EXAMINATION OF THE AIRCRAFT REVEALED THAT THE LEADING EDGE OF THE RIGHT WING AND ENGINE COWLING WERE DAMAGED DURING TOUCHDOWN IN THE WATER. THE RIGHT FUEL TANK CONTAINED 4 GAL OF FUEL, THE LEFT TANK WAS FILLED WITH WATER. NO EVIDENCE OF A MECHANICAL MALFUNCTION OR FAILURE WERE FOUND.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN82FA197
- Event ID
- 20020917X03210
- Case number
- DEN82FA197
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1982-08-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1a4cb1534c1b43568513363d3f90283d0bfd62b159a011d08ca7d08859cf3d31; retrieved 2026-09-21T07:54:01.775Z.