FTW99FA150 · Grumman-Schweizer G164-B
Grumman-Schweizer G164-B · Accident: in flight encounter with weather
From Frank Federer Memorial Airport (M36) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW99FA150
- 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
Grumman-Schweizer G164-B
- Aircraft type
- Grumman Schweizer G164
- 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
- N8285K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Frank Federer Memorial Airport (M36), Brinkley, ARTo not recorded
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 › VFR flight into imc, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument rated commercial pilot lost control of the agricultural airplane after an inadvertent encounter with instrument meteorological conditions shortly after takeoff. According to the operator, the airplane departed to the west, and approximately two minutes later the pilot radioed that he was 'disoriented.' The operator stated that 'apparently [he] was trapped behind a fog bank.' A witness, who is an agricultural pilot, reported that at the time of the accident he observed ceilings between 100-150 feet agl and a fog bank, which extended from the northwest to southeast, west of the airport. Another witness located 200 yards from the accident site reported that he heard the airplane, but due to the fog he could not see the airplane until the time of impact. He added that the visibility was 500 yards at the time of the accident. Two nearby weather observation facilities reported temperature-dewpoint spreads of 1 degree and 3 degrees, and both reported mist at the time of the accident. An examination of the airframe and engine revealed no anomalies that would have prevented normal operation of the engine and airframe at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadvertent VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions. Contributing factors were the pilots failure to maintain control of the aircraft, spatial disorientation, and the fog.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW99FA150
- Event ID
- 20001212X18763
- Case number
- FTW99FA150
- 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: c4883e50fe2b511062b0938e92e94e9b8438d5038b5da127c551308e41cb780a; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:05:41.641Z.