FTW95FA111 · Cessna 177RG
Cessna 177RG · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS) to Centennial Airport (APA)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW95FA111
- 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
- 0
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 177RG
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N33MR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS), COLORADO SPGS, COTo Centennial Airport (APA), Englewood, CO
- 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 encounter with weather
- 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
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT FIRST MADE 3 INFLIGHT CONTACTS WITH THE DENVER AFSS, AND WAS ADVISED OF FORECAST ICING CONDITIONS AND TURBULENCE ALONG HIS ROUTE. HE WAS TOLD THAT VFR FLIGHT WAS NOT RECOMMENDED BECAUSE PILOTS HAD REPORTED CLOUD BASES 'ON THE GROUND.' THE PILOT THEN LANDED AT COLORADO SPRINGS DUE TO DETERIORATING WEATHER CONDITIONS, AND OBTAINED THREE MORE TELEPHONE BRIEFINGS FROM THE AFSS. DURING THE LAST BRIEFING, HE WAS TOLD THAT ALTHOUGH VFR CONDITIONS WERE BEING REPORTED AT COLORADO SPRINGS AND CENTENNIAL AIRPORT (HIS DESTINATION), THERE WAS A BAND OF LEVEL ONE PRECIPITATION ACROSS HIS ROUTE OF FLIGHT, AND WAS ADVISED NOT TO ATTEMPT VFR FLIGHT. THE PILOT TOOK OFF FOR THE 30 MIN FLIGHT TO CENTENNIAL AIRPORT. A WITNESS NEAR THE ACCIDENT SITE HEARD A LOW-FLYING AIRPLANE PASS OVER HIS HOUSE. SHORTLY THEREAFTER, HE HEARD A LOUD NOISE AND OBSERVED A FIRE. THE WITNESS SAID IT WAS SNOWING HEAVILY AT THE TIME, AND VISIBILITY WAS LESS THAN 1/4 MI. A LOCAL RESIDENT ALSO REPORTED THAT AT 1955 HE SCRAPED A THIN LAYER OF ICE FROM HIS WINDSHIELD.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S DECISION TO CONTINUE VFR FLIGHT INTO INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS AFTER BEING ADVISED THAT VFR FLIGHT WAS NOT RECOMMENDED. THE WEATHER AND DARK NIGHT WERE FACTORS IN THE ACCIDENT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW95FA111
- Event ID
- 20001207X02952
- Case number
- FTW95FA111
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1995-02-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: af06ea60ea3deca78a14fee2e91ee8d07466f1514d500e4b98adf0a9d2efbc6a; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:52:22.202Z.