SEA05FA038 · Cirrus SR22
Cirrus SR22 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Salem-Willamette Valley Airport/McNary Field (SLE) to Ken Jernstedt Airfield (4S2)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA05FA038
- 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
- 3 · 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
Cirrus SR22
- Aircraft type
- Cirrus SR22
- 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
- N6057M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salem-Willamette Valley Airport/McNary Field (SLE), Salem, ORTo Ken Jernstedt Airfield (4S2), Hood River, 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
- En route · 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 collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, 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
The pilot, with his two passengers, were returning to Hood River, Oregon, on a dark, low overcast night. Radar data indicates that the airplane flew up the Columbia River, which has mountainous terrain on both sides, and was last recorded at 2,500 feet near North Bonneville, Washington. Family members reported the airplane overdue; no ELT signal was ever received. Search and rescue personnel located the airplane the following day on a ridge approximately 5 nautical miles from the intended destination. There were no survivors. No preimpact engine or airframe anomalies, which might have affected the airplane’s performance, were identified.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain terrain clearance. Contributing factors were the mountainous terrain, the low ceiling weather conditions, and dark night light conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA05FA038
- Event ID
- 20050125X00105
- Case number
- SEA05FA038
- 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 2005-01-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 23d1dd1761090c9ae73a863736eee3e8c3526f7afc9b510a3770e5967dfde72b; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:08:14.543Z.