SEA05CA055 · Cessna 172H
Cessna 172H · Accident: in flight collision with object during initial climb
From Wakonda Beach State Airport (R33) to Albany Municipal Airport (S12)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA05CA055
- 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 172H
- 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
- N8100L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wakonda Beach State Airport (R33), Waldport, ORTo Albany Municipal Airport (S12), Albany, 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Altitude/clearance, not attained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, the 2,000-foot-long turf runway was covered with "heavy grass and moss." The pilot reported that during the takeoff roll, the airplane "encountered considerable drag from the turf and moss on the runway." After takeoff, "there was not enough speed or distance to climb over the trees at the end of the runway and the airplane clipped the tops of the trees." The airplane came to rest nose down in the trees. The right wing was folded back against the fuselage, and the left wing had a large dent in the leading edge.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to attain sufficient altitude/clearance during the takeoff initial climb, which resulted in an inflight collision with trees. A factor was the tall grass on the turf runway, which slowed the airplane's acceleration during the takeoff roll.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA05CA055
- Event ID
- 20050406X00418
- Case number
- SEA05CA055
- 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 2005-03-06.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c069c81d9f9774db1125f6b96a94a24519538680a138663092dba933dac1c91a; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:04:07.651Z.