NYC98FA016 · Cessna 182P
Cessna 182P · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport (ROC) to Yeager Airport (CRW)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC98FA016
- 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 182P
- 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
- N9388G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport (ROC), Rochester, NYTo Yeager Airport (CRW), Charleston, WV
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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 › Instructions, written/verbal, not followed
- Weather condition › Carburetor icing conditions
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While en route, the pilot called ATC and amended his final destination. The airplane was at 5,000 feet in the vicinity of the original destination when ATC instructed the pilot to climb and maintain 6,000. Shortly thereafter, the pilot reported a loss of engine power. The pilot was advised the airport was at his 6 o'clock position and 5 miles. The controller repeatedly instructed the pilot to '...turn around...' and '...make a left turn around...' to a heading of 020 degrees. The pilot asked for the heading and it was repeated by the controller. The pilot acknowledged '...020.' When the controller asked if the pilot could turn to a heading of 020 the pilot responded, 'I'm heading 220...' The airplane collided with terrain approximately 10 miles from the airport. Examination of the pilot's logbook revealed approximately 117 hours of flight experience in the 6 years prior to the accident. The pilot was not current for IFR flight. The pilot's CFI stated he recommended instrument proficiency training to the pilot 6 months prior to the accident. The airplane was in cruise flight in conditions conducive to serious icing at cruise power.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to carburetor ice and the pilot's failure to follow ATC instructions during the emergency descent.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC98FA016
- Event ID
- 20001208X09091
- Case number
- NYC98FA016
- 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: 2a05d653a24f5174f6e62f78c60dd98638a0b5947fa61e18c9f4c406d1d361e7; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:47:16.602Z.