DEN00LA046 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather during initial climb
From Dawei Airport (TVY) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN00LA046
- 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
- 0 · 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 172
- 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
- N6445B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dawei Airport (TVY)To 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 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Descent, not corrected
- Pilot in command › Visual lookout, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that the purpose of the flight was to make three takeoffs and landings to obtain recent night flying experience. He determined that the weather conditions were suitable for VFR flight. He took off on runway 34 and during the climbout, he encountered fog. He made a 180 degree turn and started a gradual descent. When he was abeam the midfield point, he began to see runway lights. When he was abeam the threshold of the approach end of the runway, he flew out of the fog. The descent continued on the downwind leg and the airplane collided with rising terrain at a point where a turn onto base leg would commence.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to correct the descent, and his failure to maintain a visual lookout. Factors were the pilot's improper weather evaluation, his lack of recent experience in type of operation, his inadvertent encounter with instrument meteorological conditions at night, fog, and rising terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN00LA046
- Event ID
- 20001212X20353
- Case number
- DEN00LA046
- 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 2000-01-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 017c4cb9fbc17e7018e3d8b2c55513d2958c203f0e2b729ae25473e15335ff22; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:43:43.637Z.