SEA04LA081 · Cessna 172P
Cessna 172P · Accident: overrun during landing
From Portland Hillsboro Airport (HIO) to Goheen Airport (W52)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA04LA081
- 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
- N54477
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Portland Hillsboro Airport (HIO), Hillsboro, ORTo Goheen Airport (W52), Battleground, 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Overrun
- 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 › Distance, misjudged
- Dual student › Go-around, not performed
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The dual student, who holds a private pilot certificate for helicopters, was working towards a fixed-wing add-on to his certificate. As per the lesson profile, the student planned a dual cross country flight, but while en route, the instructor told the student to divert to another field. After arrival at the field, they over-flew the runway and determined that there was a direct crosswind at what they estimated was about 10 knots. The student then entered a left pattern for a full-stop landing on the damp turf runway. During his first two approaches, the student allowed the aircraft to get too high on final, and in both instances a go-around was initiated. On the third approach the aircraft remained on the proper final approach path until it was approximately 50 feet above the ground. At that point the aircraft encountered a wind gust, and it ballooned upward to an extent that the pilot was not able to descend to a position where he felt comfortable initiating the landing flare until the aircraft was almost halfway down the 2,600 foot runway. Then the aircraft "floated for awhile in ground effect" before touching down approximately two-thirds of the way down the runway. During this sequence of events, the student did not attempt to initiate a go-around on his own, and the instructor did not direct him to do one. After the aircraft touched down, the student applied the wheel brakes while holding the yoke full back for aerodynamic braking. Then the instructor came on the controls and assisted with the braking effort. Ultimately the pilots were unable to get the aircraft stopped before it went off the end of the runway, down a steep embankment, and into a ditch. Upon impacting the ditch, the nose wheel folded back and the aircraft sustained substantial damage. The investigation did not find any evidence of problems with the aircraft's flight control or wheel braking systems.
Probable cause
The student pilot's misjudgment of distance and his failure to do a go-around. Also causal was the instructor's inadequate supervision of the flight. Factors include gusty crosswinds, the dual student's failure to adequately compensate for those winds, a wet runway surface, and a ditch off the departure end of the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA04LA081
- Event ID
- 20040524X00650
- Case number
- SEA04LA081
- 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: b7ee163e10207fb32a4bcecfc2f7af03f371172febd77751e2e5ec2258591062; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:34:34.873Z.