SEA03LA103 · Cessna 172P
Cessna 172P · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Kenmore Air Harbor Seaplane Base (W55) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA03LA103
- 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 172P
- 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
- N9566L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kenmore Air Harbor Seaplane Base (W55), Kenmore, 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
- 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
- Loss of control on ground/water
- 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
- Dual student › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Remedial action, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student conducted several takeoffs/landings in the Cessna 172P floatplane into a 9 knot southerly wind and then executed a westbound crosswind approach and landing. The instructor reported that there were no hazardous water conditions, no whitecaps or deep swells at the time. The instructor reported that the student lowered 30 degrees of flaps and established a standard descent attitude and airspeed of 65 knots. Upon touchdown the aircraft made a "strong" contact with water on the upwind float, pitched nose down and then nosed over. The operator's training manual for the 172P floatplane contained procedures and guidance for crosswind landings specifically, final approach speed in a crosswind landing should be 65 knots, with 20 degrees of flaps. The instructor reported a total of 224 hours in the Cessna 172 model aircraft of which slightly more than 6 hours were logged as instructor time (all in the Cessna 172). Additionally, his flight instructor certificate was issued two months prior to the accident. Winds at Boeing Field (six nautical miles south) of the site were reported as 160 degrees magnetic at four knots.
Probable cause
The dual student's failure to maintain aircraft control and the flight instructor's delayed remedial action. Contributing factors were the crosswind condition and the flight instructor's lack of experience.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA03LA103
- Event ID
- 20030620X00924
- Case number
- SEA03LA103
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2003-06-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1b7edf25d9bdcc43dcc717eb7aa00b996240eda9fa04aca35dd382e033be43ba; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:08:45.194Z.