SEA03LA037 · Cessna 172S
Cessna 172S · Accident: in flight encounter with weather on approach
From King County International Airport - Boeing Field (BFI) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA03LA037
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172S
- 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
- N912LB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From King County International Airport - Boeing Field (BFI), Seattle, WATo not recorded
- 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
- 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 encounter with weather
- 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
- Stall
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot under instruction (PUI) was engaged in training towards an instrument rating with a flight instructor pilot (IP) and had just executed a missed approach. During the missed approach maneuver, following his first instrument approach in IMC, the aircraft began picking up rime ice. The IP chose to terminate the flight and the aircraft was cleared via radar vectors for the ILS Runway 16R approach to the 9,010 foot long runway. The IP briefed the PUI on the procedures for the approach, specifically the need to maintain higher than normal airspeeds down to touchdown. On short final, about 10-15 feet above ground, and as the PUI retarded power and began decelerating to 70-75 knots, the left wing dropped and the aircraft landed hard on the left main gear and bounced. The IP then took control of the aircraft but was unable to regain directional control. The aircraft continued off the left side of the runway and into soft terrain, during which the nose gear dug in and the aircraft nosed over.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed and the instructor's inadequate supervision of the flight. Contributing factors were the rime icing conditions, and the soft terrain encountered on the off runway rollout.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA03LA037
- Event ID
- 20030211X00197
- Case number
- SEA03LA037
- 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: 0e3fb3fb499d816f33348259f40d13dfda3ac4234f4162a07ebc7982d2a90f5f; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:36:39.693Z.