NYC96FA004 · Cessna P206A
Cessna P206A · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Sky Acres Airport (44N) to Westchester County Airport (HPN)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC96FA004
- 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 P206A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N4704F
- Operator
- Gerard H. Wood · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sky Acres Airport (44N), Millbrook, NYTo Westchester County Airport (HPN), White Plains, NY
- 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); Tree(s)
- 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, initiated
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The noninstrument-rated pilot had received several weather briefings which included 'VFR flight not recommended.' He then departed on a local positioning flight. A few minutes after departure he contacted a nearby control tower and requested permission to fly through their airspace. Two minutes later, he requested to land. He was advised to continue with the approach and report a left base. Witnesses heard the airplane flying low with a steady engine, followed by the impact. They reported that fog obscured the tops of the trees and reduced forward visibility to 50 yards. The airplane impacted trees on rising terrain 8 miles south of the airport. Although the ceiling and visibility had improved to marginal VFR at the departure airport, the planned destination remained in instrument meteorological conditions.
Probable cause
The pilot's VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions. Contributing factors were the fog and dusk light conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC96FA004
- Event ID
- 20001207X04765
- Case number
- NYC96FA004
- 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: dac41a42abc7b012ddb0272ea666ef65b1e1122421203202be8eb372e6a033d9; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:34:23.780Z.