DEN00FA095 · Cessna T210K
Cessna T210K · Accident: in flight encounter with weather while maneuvering
From Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC) to Cal Black Memorial Airport (U96)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN00FA095
- 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
- 3 · 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 T210K
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 210
- 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
- N9457M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC), Broomfield, COTo Cal Black Memorial Airport (U96), HALLS CROSSING, UT
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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, performed
- Pilot in command › Weather forecast, disregarded
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot filed a flight plan, and was briefed of mountain obscuration and that VFR flight was not recommended. A witness driving over a mountain pass observed the airplane flying at an estimated 300 to 400 feet AGL. The witness said that the fog and snow showers allowed him to follow the airplane only for a few seconds. Search and rescue personnel located the wreckage on a heavily forested mountainside two days later. Examination of the wreckage revealed no preimpact engine or airframe abnormalities that might have affected the airplane's performance. Toxicological reports indicate that the pilot had the metabolites of Valium and Prozac in his body. The FAA does not approve these prescribed medications for pilots, while they are on flight statues.
Probable cause
the pilot's disregard of the weather forecast, and his VFR flight into IMC. Contributing factors were snow showers, fog, and the mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN00FA095
- Event ID
- 20001212X20974
- Case number
- DEN00FA095
- 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: a842d6739a560ed7384ecca8f83a7806d9be8f17d117dc9e8372b345b6821b39; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:12:06.489Z.