WPR17LA084 · Cirrus Design Corp SR22
The Flight Academy Cirrus Design Corp SR22 · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) while maneuvering
From Whidbey Air Park (W10) to Bremerton National Airport (PWT)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR17LA084
- 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
Cirrus Design Corp 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
- N167CB
- Operator
- The Flight Academy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Whidbey Air Park (W10), Langley, WATo Bremerton National Airport (PWT), Bremerton, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 13 years (built 2004)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- Defining eventThe 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and student pilot departed on a planned 3-hour instructional flight. While en route, the flight instructor stated that he wanted to show the student that there was more to flying than just training and that flying was also "fun." The pilots subsequently turned the airplane toward a large river valley in mountainous terrain. The pilots flew into an area of rapidly rising terrain and realized they needed to climb to avoid terrain. The flight instructor applied full power and pitched the airplane up into a climb; however, the terrain rose faster than the airplane was climbing. The flight instructor instructed the student pilot to start a right turn. Shortly thereafter, he felt the turn was too slow, and he took control of the airplane. The flight instructor stated that things were happening too fast for him to recover the airplane. The airplane subsequently impacted terrain in a box canyon, with ridgelines between 100 feet to several hundred feet higher than the accident site. Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's decision to fly into a valley without ensuring adequate clearance to avoid the rising terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR17LA084
- Event ID
- 20170403X22521
- Case number
- WPR17LA084
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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. 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: b4e9aad12cfde4eccde2504157ab9620aa8df7dd0ebfd8d7f022082d7b6196c6; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:08:22.255Z.