WPR20FA086 · Cessna 140 A
Cessna 140 A · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) on approach
From Harris Ranch Airport (3O8) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20FA086
- 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
- 2 · 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 140 A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 140
- 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
- N9474A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Harris Ranch Airport (3O8), Coalinga, CATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 71 years (built 1949)
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot performed an uneventful cross-country flight to take the passenger to a business meeting. He intended to complete the trip during the day (and return to the home airport by 1700), so he would not have to fly at night. Radar data indicated the airplane stopped at four airports before departing for the final leg to the home airport. The final stop included fueling the airplane with approximately 20 gallons of 100 low-lead aviation fuel and departing at 1702. The airplane flew on a northbound heading for about an hour, varying its altitude between 2,000 and 3,000 ft mean sea level (msl) as it continued toward the home airport. When the airplane was about 1.5 nautical miles (nm) from the runway, it turned slightly to the right, consistent with a straight-in approach. It descended gradually until track data were lost about .75 nm from the approach end of the runway. The airplane impacted a tree with its left wing and then continued about 300 ft before coming to rest inverted between two trees. The accident occurred 39 minutes after sunset and 11 minutes after dusk. A witness near the accident site reported that he was working on his ranch when the daylight started to fade. He estimated it was around dusk when he heard a loud bang. He looked toward the noise and saw the airplane for about 3 seconds before he heard another bang, followed by silence. Prior to that, he heard the airplane's engine and noted it was not making any unusual sounds. A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The fact that the pilot did not want to fly at night indicated some apprehension on his part, and his night flying experience could not be determined. It is possible the pilot was distracted by the night conditions and unaware of what the approach to the airport looked like at night. He likely did not see the tree along the flightpath before the airplane’s impact.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain clearance from trees during approach for landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20FA086
- Event ID
- 20200205X33820
- Case number
- WPR20FA086
- 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: local date, investigation status, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2020-02-06.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2275910e3edc138591de629114b562e4bc474b38d9a200a6b4e5936929642a32; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:11:34.051Z.