SEA96FA036 · Piper PA-28-235
Piper PA-28-235 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From St George Regional Airport (SGU) to U42 · WEST JORDON, UT
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA96FA036
- 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-28-235
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N8870W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St George Regional Airport (SGU), ST GEORGE, UTTo U42 · WEST JORDON, UT
- 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)
- 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 instrument-rated commercial pilot received a weather briefing for a VFR cross-country flight. The briefer described deteriorating VFR conditions along the pilot's route of flight, and the pilot elected not to file an IFR flight plan. The pilot departed on the flight and encountered dark night conditions in mountainous terrain near his destination. Lowering cloud ceilings and blowing snow were reported in the vicinity of the accident site about the time of the accident. The airplane impacted mountainous terrain near the top of a ridge about 20 miles from the intended destination. Radar data showed that the airplane had entered a climbing turn and was climbing through about 5000 feet msl when the last radar return was recorded. Elevation of the crash site was about 5000 feet. No distress calls or communications to ATC were made by the pilot, and no preimpact mechanical malfunction was found.
Probable cause
continued VFR flight by the pilot into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC), and his failure to maintain sufficient altitude and/or clearance from mountainous terrain. Factors relating to the accident were: darkness, low ceiling, and snow.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA96FA036
- Event ID
- 20001208X05196
- Case number
- SEA96FA036
- 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 1996-01-02.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f4ce61a6cf33303d4509a2c9c0dbd2f326e6653e78918c7a7c2e9a7914f0bde2; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:28:23.365Z.