SEA05FA124 · Cessna 320E
Map Cessna 320E · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during initial climb
From Missoula Montana Airport (MSO) to Missoula Montana Airport (MSO)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA05FA124
- 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 320E
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 320
- 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
- N3438Q
- Operator
- Map
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Missoula Montana Airport (MSO), Missoula, MTTo Missoula Montana Airport (MSO), Missoula, MT
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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, 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
The pilot noted there were no anomalies with the airplane prior to departure during the preflight and engine runups, and that the takeoff was normal until about 100 to 200 feet above the ground when the right engine lost power. After feathering the right propeller, securing the engine, and establishing a left bank into the operating engine, the airplane began to climb slowly. The pilot then turned about 25 degrees to the left towards a field to avoid some trees. However, due to the initial loss of altitude when the engine lost power the airplane was now below the top of a hill, which the pilot was unable to clear. The airplane subsequently impacted the hill in a slightly right wing low, nose high attitude. The aircraft was consumed by fire, but not before the pilot and his passenger egressed the airplane safely. During the postaccident recovery of the right engine's turbocharger, which had separated from the engine during the impact sequence, various pieces of paper were observed lodged between the turbocharger's impeller and its housing. An examination of the pieces of paper extracted from the turbocharger revealed they were from an air filter instructional sheet. It was also determined that the replacement air filter had been installed on the right engine approximately 4 months prior to the accident, with the airplane having accumulated about 54 hours during that time period. Inspection of a new packaged filter revealed that the instruction sheet (8 1/2 x 11 folded into a quarter sheet), along with a sticker are placed inside the filter canister and the canister is placed in a plastic bag. The sticker was at the bottom of the bag while the instructions were molded to the inside of the filter. The pilot disclosed that the gross weight of the airplane at takeoff was 5,382.6 pounds.
Probable cause
Terrain clearance was not possible as a result of a right engine failure. Factors contributing to the accident included the rising terrain, foreign material being ingested into the engine's turbocharger, which obstructed the turbocharger's impeller, the failure of company maintenance personnel to ensure that the air filter instruction sheet was removed after maintenance had been completed on the airplane, and the pilot's inadequate preflight planning and decision in taking off in excess of the airplane's maximum certificated gross takeoff weight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA05FA124
- Event ID
- 20050623X00862
- Case number
- SEA05FA124
- 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: 3cb9743808ae1a1ec0233206cc91c62343167ca961486894124458484a5df3d1; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:06:12.049Z.