SEA06CA111 · North American SNJ-6
North American SNJ-6 · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From Afton Municipal Airport (AFO) to Jerome County Airport (JER)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA06CA111
- 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
North American SNJ-6
- Aircraft type
- North American SNJ-6
- 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
- N45CK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Afton Municipal Airport (AFO), Afton, WYTo Jerome County Airport (JER), Jerome, 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 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 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
- Wire, transmission
- 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, low
- Pilot in command › 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 reported that it was cold at a cruise altitude of 8,500 feet msl, and he decided to descend to warmer altitudes. He descended to follow a river. He checked his aeronautical chart and "didn't observe any charted power lines crossing on the segment of the river" that he was flying. He descended to "about 100 feet above the river" and followed the river. He saw three wooden poles and a crossbeam located along the edge of the river, did not see wires, but "made the immediate assumption that there were wires." He pulled up and heard a loud bang as the airplane struck the wires. He also saw a blue flash. After determining that the airplane was "able to continue safe flight," he made a decision to proceed to his original destination, where he was able to make a normal landing. The pilot examined the airplane and reported that the pitot mast was torn from the right wing tip, the leading edges of both outer wing panels were damaged, and there were two puncture holes in the fabric of the left aileron. The pilot stated that "there may have been many contributing factors to this accident but I simply should have had more altitude in order to avoid any possibility of a wire strike."
Probable cause
The pilot's performance of low altitude flight and his failure to maintain clearance with a power line, which resulted in an in-flight collision with the power line.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA06CA111
- Event ID
- 20060616X00755
- Case number
- SEA06CA111
- 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 2006-06-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 422dfd6b13f95a39c80bcb05d8a17e30bd200e1ad2796abfa69d9ef6937dce0a; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:48:46.404Z.