SEA03LA201 · Cessna 172S
Cessna 172S · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while taxiing
From Orcas Island Airport (ORS) to Anacortes Airport (74S)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA03LA201
- 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 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
- N3555L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From Orcas Island Airport (ORS), EASTSOUND, WATo Anacortes Airport (74S), Anacortes, 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
- Taxi
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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 › Operation with known deficiencies in equipment, attempted
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 he experienced a complete wheel brake failure while taxiing for takeoff. The pilot said that he applied brakes, with little response, as the airplane neared the end of the inclined taxiway. He reported that he was not able to stop the airplane, and it continued off the end of the taxiway. After exiting the taxiway, the airplane encountered rough uneven terrain and eventually came to rest, nose down, in a drainage ditch. In a written statement, the pilot reported that on the previous landing, the airplane "shuttered violently" when he applied wheel brakes during the landing roll. He stated that after parking the airplane he noticed brake fluid "dripping" from the area of the wheel brakes. The pilot also stated that after discovering the problem with the brakes, he contacted the operator of the airplane concerning the problem. The pilot reported that the operator instructed him to "...ferry the aircraft back to ORS [Orcas Island] for maintenance." In a written report dated November 20, 2003, the operator stated that the pilot advised him that only a small amount of brake fluid had leaked from the system. Post accident examination of the wheel brake components by an investigator from the National Transportation Safety Board revealed that the brake pads were worn beyond limits, which allowed the caliper seals (O-ring) to unseat resulting in a loss of brake fluid.
Probable cause
The pilot attempting to taxi the airplane with a known system deficiency. Factors include worn wheel brakes and a drainage ditch.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA03LA201
- Event ID
- 20031113X01900
- Case number
- SEA03LA201
- 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 2003-09-18.
- API snapshot SHA-256: dbaa6ce167c5992493f2d5946cdabf7a77d22e2c58b84ec68e962a4a38961178; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:30:46.266Z.