SEA95LA185 · Cessna 177RG
Cessna 177RG · Accident: in flight encounter with weather while maneuvering
From UT · Provo, UT to Grand Junction Regional Airport (GJT)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA95LA185
- 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
- Unknown
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
- N1930Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From UT · Provo, UTTo Grand Junction Regional Airport (GJT), Grand Junction, 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument rated private pilot noticed low clouds and fog ahead of him as he flew over mountainous terrain towards his destination. He decided to divert to another airport due to the worsening weather conditions. As he maneuvered the airplane around the mountainous terrain and attempted to stay below the clouds, he inadvertently encountered low clouds and a downdraft near the leeward side of a mountain ridge. The airplane collided with terrain. Ground witnesses observed the airplane flying in close proximity to the ground and in the vicinity of low clouds and fog immediately prior to the accident.
Probable cause
the pilot's continued flight into instrument meteorological conditions, and his failure to maintain altitude and clearance from the mountainous terrain. Factors contributing to the accident were the fog, low ceilings, and downdraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA95LA185
- Event ID
- 20001207X04385
- Case number
- SEA95LA185
- 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: dc3f21d9feaff81bec10d483df19f2ea4d5d0e8399768a77c92edd1b843f819f; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:39:38.187Z.