FTW98FA393 · Cessna T310R
Cessna T310R · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Carson Airport (CXP) to Las Cruces International Airport (LRU)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98FA393
- 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
Cessna T310R
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 310
- 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
- N467DL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Carson Airport (CXP), Carson City, NVTo Las Cruces International Airport (LRU), Las Cruces, NM
- 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 › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane departed Carson City, Nevada, on April 26, 1998, and was en route to Las Cruces, New Mexico. Radar data indicates it flew at 13,500 feet msl at an average ground speed of 185 knots throughout most of the flight. As the airplane approached the Arizona-New Mexico border, it descended at an average rate of 669 feet per minute and 209 knots ground speed. The last radar contact was at a point 13 west of Springerville, Arizona, when the airplane was at 10,500 feet msl. On September 13, 1998, the wreckage was located at the 8,700 foot level of the Sawtooth Mountains, about 2.5 miles east of Pie Town, New Mexico, and 75 miles east of the last point of radar contact. Witness marks provided evidence that the aircraft collided with vertical terrain in a wings level attitude. On the day of the accident, convective activity was forecast, and satellite photos showed extensive cloud cover in the area.
Probable cause
The pilot's continuing VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions. Contributing factors were weather conditions, that included clouds, and mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98FA393
- Event ID
- 20001211X09849
- Case number
- FTW98FA393
- 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: e672e33ef1c32364694e2f90d7b1df2f5e8c9551efa9fc0ab12a8710d7b66942; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:36:46.606Z.