BFO95FA071 · Cessna 182P
Cessna 182P · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Richmond International Airport (RIC) to Clearview Airpark (2W2)
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO95FA071
- 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 182P
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N1284S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Richmond International Airport (RIC), Richmond, VATo Clearview Airpark (2W2), CLEARVIEW, MD
- 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
- 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 › Flight into known adverse weather, attempted
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot received two preflight weather briefings that indicated the weather en route was IFR, and that flight precautions existed along his route of flight. He was advised that VFR flight was not recommended. The airplane collided with trees in mountainous terrain and was destroyed by fire. According to FAA records, the pilot reported that he saw the ground through a hole in the clouds, and requested a descent. He was told that the minimum vector altitude west of his destination was 4000 feet MSL due to high terrain. Postaccident examination of the aircraft revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunction. The pilot was not instrument rated for airplanes. He possessed an instrument rating for helicopters.
Probable cause
the pilot's continued flight into known adverse weather during descent, which resulted in in-flight collision with terrain. Related factors were the pilot's disregard of a hazardous weather advisory, and the low ceilings, fog and drizzle.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO95FA071
- Event ID
- 20001207X03626
- Case number
- BFO95FA071
- 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 1995-06-24.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 8a2863c1893695cb9f028449e047ec2135958de6e7365a47a3fe65267400c314; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:43:45.074Z.