FTW95FA130 · Cessna 421C
Cessna 421C · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From OKC Will Rogers World Airport (OKC) to Saransk International Airport (SKX)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW95FA130
- 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
- 4 · 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 421C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 421
- 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
- N421BL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From OKC Will Rogers World Airport (OKC), Oklahoma City, OKTo Saransk International Airport (SKX)
- 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 · descent
- 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
- Stall
- 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
- Airframe › Ice
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT OBTAINED A WEATHER BRIEFING FOR THE IFR FLIGHT TO TAOS, NEW MEXICO, AND WAS ADVISED OF FORECAST CONDITIONS FOR LIGHT TO MODERATE RIME ICING AND MODERATE TURBULENCE AT HIS DESTINATION. DURING DESCENT, ABOUT 30 NM EAST OF THE TAOS VOR, AT 15,200 FEET, THE PILOT REPORTED 'LIGHT RIME ICING' AND 3 MINUTES LATER 'FREEZING RAIN.' THE AIRPLANE WAS CLEARED FOR THE VOR DME-B APPROACH TO THE TAOS AIRPORT, AND RADAR SERVICES WERE TERMINATED. THE AIRPLANE IMPACTED THE GROUND IN A STEEP NOSE DOWN ATTITUDE 7 NM SE OF THE VOR AND 1 NM RIGHT OF THE INBOUND APPROACH COURSE . WEATHER DATA INDICATED THAT THE AIRPLANE ENTERED CLOUDS ABOUT 6 NM EAST OF WHERE 'LIGHT RIME' WAS REPORTED AND REMAINED IN THE CLOUDS UNTIL IT DESCENDED BELOW 10,000 FEET. METEOROLOGICAL INVESTIGATION INDICATED THAT THE FREEZING LEVEL WAS ABOUT 10,700 FEET. RADAR DATA REVEALED CYCLIC VARIATIONS IN THE AIRPLANE'S GROUNDSPEED FROM 120 TO 190 KNOTS, AS IT CROSSED THE HIGH MOUNTAIN RANGE EAST OF TAOS. THERE WAS A PIREP OF SEVERE TURBULENCE ON THE EASTERN SLOPE OF THE MOUNTAIN RANGE.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S DECISION TO CONTINUE FLIGHT INTO KNOWN ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS AND THE ENSUING INADVERTENT STALL DUE TO AIRFRAME ICE. FACTORS WERE THE WEATHER CONDITIONS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW95FA130
- Event ID
- 20001207X03108
- Case number
- FTW95FA130
- 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. 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: 382be8b0d858a4c45c3d562c9ec354689289c71451afbc34c7db7ad650713b05; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:51:12.498Z.