SEA04LA050 · Cessna 170
Cessna 170 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while maneuvering
From Diamond Point Airstrip (2WA1) to Auburn Municipal Airport (S50)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA04LA050
- 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
- 2 · 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 170
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 170
- 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
- N2534V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Diamond Point Airstrip (2WA1), Sequim, WATo Auburn Municipal Airport (S50), Auburn, 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
- 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Air cond/heating/pressurization › Contamination
- Exhaust system, muffler › Fractured
- Pilot in command › Incapacitation(carbon monoxide)
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was en route when according to the last nine minutes of radar data, the airplane descended from 3,400 to 300 feet. Sixteen days after the aircraft was reported missing Search and Rescue personnel located the airplane in a water inlet at a depth of 132 feet; 19 days later the aircraft was recovered from the accident site. A postaccident examination of the engine and the airframe revealed that the left exhaust muffler had separated at the forward seam, with evidence of sooting noted on the scat hoses surrounding the area. It was also observed that the forward end cap and exhaust riser were separated from the main body of the muffler. Magnified examinations found that almost all of the fractures were blackened and severely oxidized. The failure of the muffler was the result of undetected oxidation and cracking resulting from normal thermal degradation. The cracking would have allowed exhaust gases direct access to cabin air through the heater system. Toxicological testing of the pilot and his passenger revealed carbon monoxide levels of 45 percent and 46 percent, respectively.
Probable cause
The failure of the left muffler while maneuvering, resulting in a carbon monoxide leak into the cabin rendering the pilot incapacitated, and the subsequent uncontrolled descent and impact with water.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA04LA050
- Event ID
- 20040322X00354
- Case number
- SEA04LA050
- 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 2004-03-01.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f63dad8e98969580827e394611915a5422dbfccb1190d5bc3332b342f1dc6052; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:31:50.278Z.