SEA04LA096 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: overrun during landing
From Stark's Twin Oaks Airpark (7S3) to Vernonia Airfield (05S)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA04LA096
- 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 172M
- 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
- N5440H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stark's Twin Oaks Airpark (7S3), Twin Oaks A/P, ORTo Vernonia Airfield (05S), Vernonia, OR
- 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
- 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
- Pilot in command › Distance/speed, misjudged
- Pilot in command › Go-around, 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 instructor pilot, who was performing a simulated engine out forced landing as a demonstration for his student, allowed the aircraft's airspeed to remain too fast while on final approach to the 2,940 foot grass strip. Because the airspeed was faster than he desired, during the flare, the aircraft began to float further down the runway than where he had planned to touch down. The instructor pilot was unable to get the aircraft to touch down until approximately 1,000 feet down the runway. After touchdown on the wet grass, he attempted to stop the aircraft before it reached the end of the runway, but he was unable to do so before the aircraft went off the far end. After departing the runway, the aircraft collided with a nearby fence post.
Probable cause
The instructor pilot's misjudgment of speed and distance and his failure to execute a go-around resulting in an overrun of the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA04LA096
- Event ID
- 20040608X00750
- Case number
- SEA04LA096
- 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: d3be9bad272b751ed9b68627d329d72c281ae69ae81e98178bd25f6032f50faf; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:27:21.920Z.