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Atlas / NTSB / SEA90LA082

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event SEA90LA082

1990-05-21 ELLENSBURG, Washington, United States Airport · ELN None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

THE LOSS OF ENGINE POWER DUE TO CARBURETOR ICING, CAUSED BY THE PILOT'S FAILURE TO APPLY CARBURETOR HEAT. FACTORS IN THE ACCIDENT WERE THE CARBURETOR ICING WEATHER CONDITIONS AND THE LACK OF SUITABLE TERRAIN FOR FORCED LANDING.

Factual narrative

THE PILOT TOOK OFF FROM ELLENSBURG AIRPORT AND WAS CLIMBING ON DOWNWIND WHEN THE ENGINE QUIT. HE WAS UNABLE TO RETURN TO THE RUNWAY FOR THE EMERGENCY FORCED LANDING. THE AIRCRAFT IMPACTED ROUGH TERRAIN OFF THE AIRPORT, AND WAS SUBSTANTIALLY DAMAGED. ICING PROBABILITY CHARTS INDICATE MODERATE TO SEVERE CARB ICING CONDITIONS EXISTED. THE PILOT HAD NOT APPLIED CARB HEAT. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_1990_SEA90LA082.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Related research

What the literature says.

Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (icing). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.

Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗