SEA96LA068 · Schweizer G-164B
Schweizer G-164B · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Laramie Regional Airport (LAR) to Southwest Wyoming Regional Airport (RKS)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA96LA068
- 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
Schweizer G-164B
- Aircraft type
- Schweizer G-164
- 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
- N3632T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Laramie Regional Airport (LAR), Laramie, WYTo Southwest Wyoming Regional Airport (RKS), Rock Springs, 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
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The accident pilot was flying in formation with two other airplanes on a ferry flight. All three airplanes were restricted category agricultural aircraft that were being ferried from Missouri to Idaho. The pilots were on a day-VFR cross-country flight in preparation for a season of agricultural spraying. They encountered a localized area of low ceilings, reduced visibility, and snow during a final leg of the flight, and they began to follow an interstate highway. One of the pilots reversed course and landed uneventfully at an airport. Another pilot landed on a highway. The pilot of the accident airplane strayed away from the interstate and entered instrument meteorological conditions (IMC). Subsequently, the accident airplane entered a steep descent and crashed in a nose-down attitude. There was evidence that the engine was operating at a high power setting, when the airplane crashed. The aircraft was not equipped for flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC). No preimpact mechanical malfunction or failure of the airplane or its engine was found.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadvertent VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC), and his failure to maintain aircraft control due to spatial disorientation. Factors relating to the accident were: the low ceiling and snow.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA96LA068
- Event ID
- 20001208X05484
- Case number
- SEA96LA068
- 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: 6bd9e7f8611bd0a4931e408549fe1da8627575d16ce43c4cb6bb92addca7ebdb; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:24:42.174Z.