DEN93FA042 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS) to Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN93FA042
- 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
Piper PA-28-140
- 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
- N7536R
- Operator
- Sommer, Glenn · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS), CO. SPRINGS, COTo Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP), Rapid City, SD
- 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
- Flight instructor(on ground) › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Falcon, CO, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
AT APPROXIMATELY 2210 MOUNTAIN DAYLIGHT TIME A STUDENT DEPARTED COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO, ON A STUDENT CROSS COUNTRY SOLO FLIGHT. THE STUDENT HAD 22 HOURS TOTAL FLIGHT TIME AND THIS WAS HIS FIRST SOLO CROSS COUNTRY FLIGHT. THE STUDENT RECEIVED A WEATHER BRIEF AT APPROXIMATELY 1827 THE DAY OF THE ACCIDENT AND THE INSTRUCTOR HAD RECEIVED A WEATHER BRIEF ON BEHALF OF THE STUDENT AT 0635 THE DAY OF THE ACCIDENT. BOTH WEATHER BRIEFS INDICATED WEATHER PATTERNS COULD BE EXPECTED TO BE IN THE AREA NORTH OF COLORADO SPRINGS DURING THE TIME PERIOD ENCOMPASSING THE ACCIDENT. THE BRIEFS INDICATED THAT THE WEATHER WAS EXPECTED TO BE VISUAL CONDITIONS CLEAR OF CLOUDS. THE STUDENT PILOT HAD RECEIVED NO INSTRUMENT TRAINING AND THE FLIGHT ENCOUNTERED INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS AND RADAR AND VOICE CONTACT WAS LOST AT APPROXIMATELY 2217, 17 MILES NORTH OF COLORADO SPRINGS. THE AIRCARFT IMPACTED INTO OPEN TERRAIN AND WITNESS WEATHER OBSRVATIONS INDICATED LOW CEILINGS AND REDUCED VISIBILITY.
Probable cause
INADEQUATE SUPERVISION OF THE STUDENT PILOT BY THE FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR. FACTORS WERE: IMC WEATHER CONDITIONS, DARK NIGHT, INACCURATE WEATHER EVALUATION BY BOTH THE FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR AND STUDENT PILOT, AND INADEQUATE TRAINING OF THE STUDENT PILOT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN93FA042
- Event ID
- 20001211X12111
- Case number
- DEN93FA042
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1993-04-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9bdb06842c4188c88a3fa88637b919131033343f3e9f4ad4373a7d68f1c4f2dc; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:37:29.980Z.