SEA07FA134 · Cessna 185
Cessna 185 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during landing
From Wilbur, WA to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA07FA134
- 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
- 1 · 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 185
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 185
- 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
- N9434N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wilbur, WATo not recorded
- 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
- Landing · emergency landing after takeoff
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Based on all the available evidence, it is believed that shortly after taking off from his private grass airstrip, the pilot encountered an undetermined problem that caused him to attempt a precautionary or forced landing in the only nearby level flat open area available. During that attempt, with the airplane in the landing configuration, and at a very low airspeed, the airplane's left wing came in contact with the level terrain. When the wing contacted the terrain, the airplane cart wheeled nose-first into the ground, and came to a stop about 12 feet beyond where the nose impacted the field. The investigation did not reveal any anomalies in the airplane's airframe, engine, or flight controls that would explain the necessity for the forced landing or would have contributed to the wing tip coming in contact with the terrain. It could not be determined if the pilot lost control of the airplane during the last part of the landing sequence, or whether he inadvertently allowed the wing tip to touch the ground during a low level turn to align the airplane's heading parallel to an upcoming ditch just prior to touchdown.
Probable cause
In-flight collision with terrain shortly after takeoff for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA07FA134
- Event ID
- 20070612X00714
- Case number
- SEA07FA134
- 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: 8ad98d9e69ae07d523c30c83d7d1a45ad645cd2a6090ffe03cef0c0906a6a9eb; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:35:06.300Z.