DEN92FA024 · Cessna 421B
Cebco Aviation Cessna 421B · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From an unrecorded airport to Anoka County-Blaine (Janes Field) Airport (ANE)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN92FA024
- 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
- 3 · 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 421B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 421
- 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
- N1974G
- Operator
- Cebco Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Anoka County-Blaine (Janes Field) Airport (ANE), Minneapolis, MN
- 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 · descent
- 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 collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Ice/frost removal from aircraft, inadequate
- Wing, skin › Ice
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
WHILE INITIATING A CROSS COUNTRY FLIGHT, THE EIGHT PLACE AIRCRAFT WITH NINE PERSONS ABOARD, IMPACTED TERRAIN SHORTLY AFTER TAKEOFF. ICE HAD BEEN SEEN ON THE WINGS AND HORIZONTAL STABILIZER, AND ICING CONDITIONS WERE PRESENT. THE AIRCRAFT WAS OVER MAXIMUM GROSS WEIGHT BY A MINIMUM OF 258 POUNDS, AND THE PILOT HELD AN EXPIRED STUDENT PILOT CERTIFICATE DATED AUGUST 17, 1984. A COPY OF A PRIVATE PILOT CERTIFICATE DESIGNATING MULTIENGINE LAND AND INSTRUMENT WAS FOUND IN THE PILOT'S PERSONAL BELONGINGS. FAA OFFICIALS CONCLUDED THAT IT WAS NOT A VALID CERTIFICATE. AN APPLICATION FOR A MEDICAL CERTIFICATE DATED MAY 30, 1991, INDICATED THE PILOT HAD 4,000 HOURS OF FLIGHT TIME. THIS FIGURE COULD NOT BE VERIFIED. JUST PRIOR TO TAKEOFF THE PILOT WAS OBSERVED BRUSHING SNOW OFF THE WINGS. FOLLOWING THE ACCIDENT GRANULAR ICE WAS FOUND ON THE AERODYNAMIC SURFACES.
Probable cause
AIRFRAME ICE AND THE PILOT'S FAILURE TO REMOVE IT. FACTORS WERE: AIRCRAFT WEIGHT EXCEEDED AND LACK OF PILOT CERTIFICATION.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN92FA024
- Event ID
- 20001211X13976
- Case number
- DEN92FA024
- 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: eb3ac45a844d9349ca94a115078bea810aaf05a236c5e0195d7bc18ce4c4516e; retrieved 2026-09-21T01:25:29.186Z.