CHI92FA035 · Cessna 172RG
Wright Aero Cessna 172RG · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Saint Cloud Regional Airport (STC) to Redwood Falls Municipal Airport (RWF)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI92FA035
- 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
- 4 · 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 172RG
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N9589B
- Operator
- Wright Aero
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Saint Cloud Regional Airport (STC), ST. CLOUD, MNTo Redwood Falls Municipal Airport (RWF), Redwood Falls, 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 · 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 › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
PILOT WHO WAS NOT INSTRUMENT RATED ATTEMPTED VFR CROSS COUNTRY FLIGHT IN IMC CONDITIONS. AIRCRAFT AND THE FOUR PERSONS ON BOARD WERE MISSING FOR THREE DAYS. AIRCRAFT WAS FOUND CRASHED INTO FROZEN LAKE HALF WAY TO INTENDED DESTINATION. PILOT GOT TWO WEATHER BRIEFINGS DURING WHICH HE WAS ADVISED OF IMC CONDITIONS ALONG HIS ROUTE OF FLIGHT AND AT INTENDED DESTINATION, AND THAT VFR FLIGHT WAS NOT RECOMMENDED.
Probable cause
PILOT FACTOR IN THAT HE HAD SPATIAL DISORIENTATION. FACTORS RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT ARE; VFR FLIGHT INTO IMC, DISREGARDING HAZARDOUS WEATHER ADVISORIES, PERFORMING FLIGHT INTO KNOWN ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS, AND OVERCONFIDENCE IN PERSONAL ABILITY BY THE PILOT IN COMMAND.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI92FA035
- Event ID
- 20001212X18425
- Case number
- CHI92FA035
- 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 1991-11-27.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f7e0104a87202c8d9b2e59f3267b76980060acaa0b98dbf326cff40e2c659164; retrieved 2026-09-21T01:27:56.099Z.