FTW98LA352 · Piper PA-28-161
Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From U27 · Tremonton, UT to Eagle County Regional Airport (EGE)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA352
- 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
- 0 · 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
Piper PA-28-161
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N54TM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From U27 · Tremonton, UTTo Eagle County Regional Airport (EGE), Eagle, CO
- 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
- Stall/mush
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Stall/mush, inadvertent
- Weather condition › High density altitude
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and his student were from Fort Worth, Texas, and they were crossing a mountain ridge eastbound at 9,500 feet msl when the flight instructor reported that they 'encountered a serious downdraft.' He immediately began a 180 degree turn and then reversed direction again back eastbound. The flight instructor stated that the 'airplane was descending about 2,500 feet per minute with full power.' The student stated that 'just as we hit some trees, I remember hearing the stall horn.' The forecast wind aloft was approximately 10 knots at 9,000 feet msl. The density altitude for 10,000 feet was calculated to have been 13,061 feet. Using the airplane's manufacturer Climb Performance charts, N54TM had approximately 210 feet per minute climb capability. The degree of bank that the flight instructor utilized for his turns was not documented, but, the book 'Flight Theory For Pilots' states that as the turning bank angle increases, the energy demands to maintain level flight asymptotically increases. The flight instructor reported that he acquired most of his flight training in Colorado Springs, Colorado, before moving to Fort Worth, Texas.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's failure to ensure adequate altitude/clearance with terrain, resulting in an encounter with a downdraft, loss of airspeed, onset of a stall/mush, and collision with high terrain.. Contributing factors were high density altitude, downdrafts, mountainous terrain, and trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA352
- Event ID
- 20001211X10848
- Case number
- FTW98LA352
- 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: 17c1b5801ba16edebd49deec4c46b9d54ecec0c6e246556fb9fd9aea80b65799; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:21:59.196Z.