Transportation Syatems Swearingen SA226TC accident
Swearingen SA226TC · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC) to Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (BOI)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA05LA014
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
Swearingen SA226TC
- Aircraft type
- Swearingen SA226
- 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
- N162WA
- Operator
- Transportation Syatems
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC), Salt Lake City, UTTo Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (BOI), Boise, ID
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Approach · IFR final approach
- 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 collision with object
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Proper glidepath, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a night instrument landing system (ILS) approach to minimums, the airplane collided with the runways approach lighting system. In a written report the pilot stated that during the transition from instruments to visual references he "apparently went below the glide slope and took out two approach lights." The weather conditions recorded 16 minutes after the time of the accident were: visibility 1/4 statute mile in fog; scattered clouds at 100 feet AGL (above ground level); overcast skies at 600 feet AGL. The published decision height/altitude for the straight-in ILS runway 10R approach at Boise is 3,036 feet above mean sea level (200 feet AGL). The published minimum visibility for a straight-in ILS approach is 1/2 mile or an RVR of 1,800 feet.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain the required glidepath, and his failure to maintain obstacle clearance after visual contact with the runway during the instrument approach.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA05LA014
- Event ID
- 20041115X01816
- Case number
- SEA05LA014
- 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: ccd5b1f58522c0f852cd0bc854f2736bd852b7532f070efed698b9abcc2237b5; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:12:28.914Z.