FTW97FA039 · Cessna 182Q
Cessna 182Q · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Eastland Municipal Airport (ETN) to E02 · Odessa, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97FA039
- 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 182Q
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N5116N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Eastland Municipal Airport (ETN), Eastland, TXTo E02 · Odessa, TX
- 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, encountered
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness reported that he heard the sound of a low flying aircraft proceeding in a northwest direction; however, he could not see the aircraft because of the low cloud cover. He said 'The engine appeared to be a little loud . . . and that he '. . . did not hear the engine make a definite miss, or cut out.' He observed the airplane descend from the overcast skies in a left turn and nose low attitude, then the airplane impacted the ground. Ceilings in the area were estimated between 300 and 900 feet AGL. The pilot had delayed his flight departure due to foggy weather conditions. He had not logged any instrument flight time from 7/2/86 to the last entry in his pilot flight log, which was for 10/17/96. Also, the pilot's wife reported that her husband had not flown instruments in a long time. Flight control continuity and integrity were verified, and an examination of the engine revealed no preimpact discrepancies.
Probable cause
the pilot's encounter with instrument meteorological conditions (IMC), and his subsequent loss of aircraft control, due to spatial disorientation. Factors relating to the accident were: the clouds, low ceilings, and the pilot's lack of recent instrument experience.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97FA039
- Event ID
- 20001208X07020
- Case number
- FTW97FA039
- 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: 083fc40ced41bd7a2fd93de897566364d5b455da36054b59f055b64221d2e7cb; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:07:47.353Z.