DEN90FA089 · Cessna 210E
Cessna 210E · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS) to Centennial Airport (APA)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN90FA089
- 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 210E
- 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
- N4912U
- Operator
- Carl Feldhamer & Associates
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS), Colorado Springs, COTo Centennial Airport (APA), Englewood, CO
- 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
- 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
- Stall/mush
- 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 › Flight into known adverse weather, initiated
- Pilot in command › Stall/mush, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
PLT OBTAINED WX BRIEFING AND ADVISED OF KNOWN ICING CONDITIONS ALONG ROUTE. PLT FILED IFR FLT PLAN AND TOOK OFF AT 1733. AT 1744, PLT REPORTED PICKING UP RIME ICE AND REQUESTED LOWER ALT. ATC WAS UNABLE TO DESCEND PLT DUE TO MINIMUM VECTORING ALT AND TOLD PLT TO CLIMB TO 10,000 FT. AT 1745, PLT ADVISED HE HAD TOO MUCH ICE AND COULD NOT CLIMB. ATC CLEARED ACFT TO 9000 FT. AT 1748, PLT SAID HE WAS LOSING STATIC SYSTEM. ATC CLEARED ACFT DIRECT TO KIOWA VORTAC AND TOWARDS LOWER TERRAIN. AT 1752, PLT SAID HE COULD NOT MAINTAIN ALT AND WAS LOSING AIRSPEED. ATC CLEARED ACFT TO 8500 FT. AT 1753, RADAR CONTACT WAS LOST. AT 1756, ACFT CRASHED. TV VIDEOTAPES TAKEN 3 HRS AFTER CRASH SHOWED AT LEAST 1-IN RIME ICE ON LEADING EDGES OF WINGS, STABILIZERS, AND STRUTS. ACFT WAS NOT CERTIFIED FOR FLT INTO KNOWN ICING CONDITIONS. PLT WAS INSTRUMENT RATED, BUT HAD LOGGED ONLY 3.75 HRS IFR FLT, ALL ACTUAL, IN PREVIOUS 6 MOS.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S INITIATION OF FLIGHT INTO KNOWN ADVERSE WEATHER, THE RAPID ICE ACCUMULATION ON THE AIRFRAME, AND AN INADVERTENT STALL-MUSH, RESULTING IN AN UNCONTROLLED DESCENT INTO TERRAIN.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN90FA089
- Event ID
- 20001212X22892
- Case number
- DEN90FA089
- 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: a5e256f5791f3f89dfe18230cf6a22923a91801e902bfb2b39b802875e1f35b1; retrieved 2026-09-21T02:48:21.511Z.