SEA03LA137 · Cirrus Design Corp. SR-20
Cirrus Design Corp. SR-20 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Ogden Hinckley Airport (OGD) to Bear Lake County Airport (1U7)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA03LA137
- 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
Cirrus Design Corp. SR-20
- Aircraft type
- Cirrus SR-20
- 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
- N27SJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ogden Hinckley Airport (OGD), Ogden, UTTo Bear Lake County Airport (1U7), Paris, 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 terrain/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
- Pilot in command › Clearance, 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 pilot reported that he approached the airstrip with the intent to fly over at about 100 feet agl. The pilot reduced power and extended full flaps. When the aircraft was over the approach end of the airstrip, he applied full power and selected 50% flap retraction and pitched up with a slight left turn. The pilot stated that everything seemed fine for about 3-5 seconds when he felt the "sink." The pilot stated that he was aware that he was going down and turned left to avoid heading directly into the rising terrain. The aircraft collided with the terrain about 600 feet from the airstrip. After the accident, it was noted that the flaps were fully retracted and that the flap control switch was in the full up position. The pilot initially reported that when he was climbing out of the aircraft, "...I specifically looked at the Flaps because I knew what had happened by the "Feel;" of the sink. " Later the pilot recalled that on several occasions, while on the ground, and with no radio transmissions, the flaps had retracted from 100% to 0 when the flap setting was selected to 50%. A review of the maintenance records did not indicate that the aircraft was inspected regarding these reports. Maintenance records did indicate that a service bulletin had been accomplished at the previous annual inspection which installed EMI suppression cores on the flap wiring between the proximity switches and the flap circuit card. The Service Bulletin indicated that radio transmissions were inducing voltage into the flap motor proximity switches that caused the flaps to stop, continue past their selected position or reverse. The pilot stated that he did not make a radio transmission at the time, but might have pressed the push-to-talk switch when he meant to press the altitude hold to cancel. Both are located on the control stick. The annual inspection was accomplished approximately 164 hours prior to the accident with no additional reports from the pilot of a problem with the flaps.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain terrain clearance while maneuvering. Rising terrain, an inadvertent raising of the flaps for unknown reasons, and low altitude were factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA03LA137
- Event ID
- 20030718X01151
- Case number
- SEA03LA137
- 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: b48895abfbf0c1365ef2dbeae0d1bf72a782263bea41a3a85c512c7d3dc0ea3c; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:25:10.004Z.