IAD96FA090 · Cessna 320C
Cessna 320C · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Dewitt Field - Old Town Municipal Airport (OLD) to Syracuse Hancock International Airport (SYR)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD96FA090
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 320C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 320
- 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
- N78KA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dewitt Field - Old Town Municipal Airport (OLD), OLD TOWNE, METo Syracuse Hancock International Airport (SYR), Syracuse, 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
- 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 › Flight into known adverse weather, continued
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Winslow, ME, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was cruising at 18,000 feet msl when radar and radio communication were lost. Radar data indicated the airplane made a 180 degree turn before impacting in a river. Witnesses reported that they heard the airplane, then saw it spiraling through the clouds. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no evidence of a preimpact anomaly. Weather data indicated a temperature of minus 9 to 10 degrees Celsius at 18,000 feet msl and a freezing level at 9,000 to 13,000 feet msl. An airmet (Zulu Update 3) was in effect for icing and freezing level conditions, which pertained to the route of flight, and there were numerous pilot reports of icing conditions in the vicinity of the accident. The pilot requested and obtained an abbreviated preflight weather briefing, and he was advised by ATC of information in the airmet. According to the owner's manual, pilots of this make/model airplane should avoid icing conditions whenever possible. The airplane was not equipped with deicing equipment, and the pitot heat switch was found in the off position.
Probable cause
the pilot's continued flight into known adverse weather conditions, and his loss of aircraft control, which resulted in an uncontrolled descent into terrain (river). The known icing condition was a related factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD96FA090
- Event ID
- 20001208X06002
- Case number
- IAD96FA090
- 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: 05a4724e24a8cdf08589319f357e72517dbf7bed1453835c16360ea22a294894; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:20:54.704Z.