DEN99FA072 · Cessna 182B
Cessna 182B · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From FTG · WATKINS, CO to 2V1 · CO
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN99FA072
- 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
- 2 · 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 182B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N2424G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From FTG · WATKINS, COTo 2V1 · 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 · 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 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 › Flight into known adverse weather, continued
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, performed
- Pilot in command › Weather forecast, disregarded
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and his wife departed Front Range en route to Pagosa Springs to visit family members. Prior to departure, the pilot obtained several weather briefings by accessing GTE's DUAT system, which called for AIRMETs for instrument conditions, mountain obscuration, turbulence and icing. The forecast was for widely scattered rain showers with low ceilings and visibility. After contacting Denver Automated Flight Service Station (AFSS) and requesting that his flight plan be activated, the briefer asked the pilot if he had received the forecasted AIRMETs. The pilot acknowledged that he had. The pilot's brother, who lived in the accident area, observed the deteriorating weather. He called the departure airport to advise the pilot to delay the flight, and was told that they had already departed. The aircraft became the subject of an ALNOT when it failed to arrive at its destination. On the evening of May 4, the airplane was located along the east side of Pagosa Peak at the 11,000 foot level. Satellite data indicated that extensive cloud cover was present in the area, and several witnesses driving through the pass near the time of the accident were unable to view the peaks of the pass due to obscuration.
Probable cause
The pilot's disregard of the adverse weather forecast, and his flight into known adverse weather by flying into instrument meteorological conditions. Factors were the existing weather conditions that included low ceilings, obscuration, and icing conditions, and the mountainous, rising terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN99FA072
- Event ID
- 20001212X18739
- Case number
- DEN99FA072
- 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: f78cc197d7b153a9b74fda8892339f939c8ffaf760a5c9d72acf078aeb8749c7; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:08:02.547Z.