SEA95FA101 · Piper PA-34-200T
Piper PA-34-200T · Accident: in flight encounter with weather on approach
From Casper-Natrona County International Airport (CPR) to Cheyenne Regional Jerry Olson Field (CYS)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA95FA101
- 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
Piper PA-34-200T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-34
- 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
- N2883D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Casper-Natrona County International Airport (CPR), Casper, WYTo Cheyenne Regional Jerry Olson Field (CYS), WY
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot contacted Cheyenne approach control at dusk and reported he was 24 miles north of the airport for landing. He was advised '...there is a thunderstorm in the vicinity of the airport north through northeast moving north occasional lightning cloud to ground and a previous aircraft reported severe turbulence.' The pilot acknowledged, then there was no further communication with the aircraft. It was subsequently reported as missing. Personnel responding to an emergency locator transmitter (ELT) signal reported an extremely low ceiling. The aircraft wreckage was found the next morning about 15 miles north of Cheyenne Airport. Investigation revealed the airplane had impacted gently rising terrain. Wreckage was oriented in a 610' long pattern on a southeasterly heading. Slash marks from both propellers were found, beginning at the initial ground impact point. No preimpact malfunction of the airplane was found. Samples taken from the pilot's remains tested positive for three over-the-counter medications, one of which is not approved for use while flying an airplane; however, the concentrations were so low that they were not quantified.
Probable cause
failure of the pilot to maintain sufficient altitude/clearance from rising terrain. Factors relating to the accident were: low light conditions at dusk, low ceilings with thunderstorms in the area, and continued flight by the pilot into adverse weather conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA95FA101
- Event ID
- 20001207X03555
- Case number
- SEA95FA101
- 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 1995-05-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 33891db5919aadff87bd3c1dcd01f2f453a04a1154c9e1cde9a5a48a08a3242e; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:46:42.545Z.