SEA02LA181 · Cessna R172K
Cessna R172K · Accident: in flight collision with object during landing
From Anacortes Airport (74S) to Shaw Island, WA
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA02LA181
- 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 R172K
- 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
- N736PJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Anacortes Airport (74S), Anacortes, WATo Shaw 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 · 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
- 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 › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
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, who operates in and out of the private airstrip on a regular basis, tried to get the aircraft on the ground before reaching a point where there is an opening in the trees, in order not to be effected by the crosswinds that were blowing. Because his approach was inadvertently higher than he had planned, the aircraft was still in the air when it reached the opening, and a very strong crosswind gust hit the aircraft from the left. Upon encountering the gust, the aircraft's left wing rose upward and the aircraft started to drift off to the right side of the runway. Although the pilot attempted to realign the aircraft with the runway, he was unable to do so before a second gust lifted the wing even higher. As he was trying to compensate for the effects of the wind gusts, the aircraft drifted further to the right and impacted coniferous trees growing just off the right side of the airstrip.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to adequately compensate for ambient wind conditions. Factors include the pilot's misjudgment of distance/altitude, gusting crosswinds, and trees growing near the edge of the airstrip.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA02LA181
- Event ID
- 20021003X05273
- Case number
- SEA02LA181
- 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: e7b3e899b62c5333d578f63c9db6b4c1b97a76a52fdff616908a036de36405dc; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:36:43.672Z.