DEN90LA079 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Colorado Plains Regional Airport (AKO) to City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN90LA079
- 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 172M
- 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
- N19948
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Colorado Plains Regional Airport (AKO), Akron, COTo City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS)
- 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 encounter with weather
- 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 › Flight into known adverse weather, initiated
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PLT & HIS WIFE WERE EN ROUTE FROM MT VERNON, OH, TO COLORADO SPRINGS, CO. THEY LANDED AT MCCOOK, NE, FOR FUEL & AN UPDATED WX BRIEFING. THE PLT WAS TOLD MVFR EXISTED AT THE DESTN, BUT IT WAS FORECAST TO CLR AT HIS ETA. HE DEPD MCCOOK WITHOUT A FLT PLAN. HE SAID HE ENCTRD 'ICE IN CLEAR SKIES' & LANDED AT AKRON, CO. AFTER A 1.5 HR WAIT, HE DEPD AKRON AT 1740 MST WITH 27.2 GAL OF FUEL ON BOARD. HE ENCTRD IMC & AIRFRAME ICE NEAR COLORADO SPRINGS & DECLARED AN EMERG. APCH CONTROL VECTORED HIM FOR AN ILS RWY 35 APCH. THE 1ST APCH WAS MISSED DUE TO ICE ON THE WINDSHIELD, BUT THE PLT SAW THE RWY ON THE 2ND APCH. WHEN OVER THE RWY & ABOUT TO FLARE, HE REDUCED POWER. WITH THE EXTRA WEIGHT &LOSS OF LIFT (DUE TO ICE ACCUMULATION), THE ACFT DROPPED & LANDED HARD. THE PLT WAS NOT INSTRUMENT RATED, BUT HAD TAKEN THE WRITTEN INSTRUMENT TEST & WAS READY FOR THE FLT TEST. THE 1920 MST WX WAS IN PART: 200' OVC, 1/4 VIS WITH FOG, WIND FROM 150 DEG AT 6 KTS. MIN RVR FOR THE APCH WAS 2400'.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S DECISION TO INITIATE FLIGHT INTO KNOWN ADVERSE WEATHER, AND HIS IN-FLIGHT PLANNING/DECISON. FACTORS RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: THE ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS, AND THE ACCUMULATION OF AIRFRAME ICE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN90LA079
- Event ID
- 20001212X22705
- Case number
- DEN90LA079
- 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 1990-03-25.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b8d2b2f53ff6f33f63c24750d945a9d3a9e578df096c20602e618dc855273526; retrieved 2026-09-23T06:35:53.667Z.