SEA04FA154 · Cessna 182P
Cessna 182P · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From William R Fairchild International Airport (CLM) to King County International Airport - Boeing Field (BFI)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA04FA154
- 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
- 1 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 182P
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N79404
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From William R Fairchild International Airport (CLM), Port Angeles, WATo King County International Airport - Boeing Field (BFI), Seattle, 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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 encounter with weather
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC); Tree(s)
- 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
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, encountered
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The passengers reported that shortly after takeoff in dark night conditions, the pilot made a turn toward rising terrain. During the climb, the aircraft entered clouds. The passenger could see terrain on both sides of the aircraft and questioned the pilot as to what mountain she was seeing. The pilot responded, "just a minute." The aircraft then suddenly broke out of the cloud and the passenger could see trees in front of the airplane. The pilot pulled up, but the aircraft collided with the tree tops and tumbled through the trees for several hundred feet before coming to rest. The passengers reported no engine or aircraft malfunction or physiological problems with the pilot at the time. Rain, clouds and fog were reported in the area at the time.
Probable cause
The pilot's VFR flight into IMC and his failure to maintain clearance from trees. Trees, mountainous terrain, dark night conditions, clouds and VFR flight into IMC were factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA04FA154
- Event ID
- 20040810X01190
- Case number
- SEA04FA154
- 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 2004-08-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 759b7d60813eb790c77ed6e89225c7ebc9ebf99a846fd141531ab36abca1507d; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:23:32.343Z.