DEN99FA142 · Cessna 172P
Robertson Aviation Cessna 172P · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Flagstaff Pulliam Airport (FLG) to Double Eagle Airport, Albuquerque, NM
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN99FA142
- 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
Cessna 172P
- 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
- N6497K
- Operator
- Robertson Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Flagstaff Pulliam Airport (FLG), Flagstaff, AZTo Double Eagle Airport, Albuquerque, NM
- 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 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 › Altitude/clearance, not obtained/maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on a cross-country flight from Hawthorne, California, to Tulsa, Oklahoma, the aircraft was proceeding from a fuel stop at Flagstaff, Arizona, to another fuel stop at Double Eagle Airport in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The pilot did not file a flight plan but was utilizing flight following. In the vicinity of Winslow, Arizona, the flight was observed by the controller to do a 180 degree turn and descend to an altitude that was below radar coverage capability. No communications or further radar contacts occurred. Two days later, when family members became concerned, an ALNOT was issued. Search efforts failed to find the missing aircraft. Nine days following the disappearance of the aircraft, a state police helicopter, working on another matter, picked up a weak ELT signal. Localization of this signal resulted in the aircraft being found approximately 160 miles east of its last known position. It had collided with the side of a mountain on a westerly heading, while in level flight, at approximately 10,600 feet above sea level. The duration and route of flight from the last radar target to the accident site could not be established. No evidence of structural and/or mechanical malfunction was found during the investigation. The weather in the area along the possible routes of flight, during the time period when the aircraft was in transit, was overcast skies with varying intensity rain and thunderstorms. The pilot held a private pilot certificate with a rating in single engine land airplanes. He had an instrument rating issued approximately 2 weeks before the accident and had 213 hours of total flight experience, with 3 hours actual instrument time and 32 hours simulated instrument time.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to fly the aircraft at an altitude sufficient to clear surrounding terrain. Factors were: The pilot's in-flight planning and decision making in proceeding into known adverse weather. Low ceiling, rain, lack of total pilot experience, and lack of total instrument time.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN99FA142
- Event ID
- 20001212X19478
- Case number
- DEN99FA142
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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 1999-08-03.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f2ba765436199e9ac032e3909cbfda4c96078769e48a7ec82f6838e79b6f2245; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:55:22.892Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. The narrative states the aircraft was "proceeding from a fuel stop at Flagstaff, Arizona, to another fuel stop at Double Eagle Airport in Albuquerque, New Mexico"; the recorded ABQ is Albuquerque International, a different airport.