DEN90FA103 · Piper PA-32C-300
Piper PA-32C-300 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC) to City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN90FA103
- 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
- 6 · 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
Piper PA-32C-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N8912N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC), Salt Lake City, UTTo City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS), Colorado Springs, 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
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PLT RENTED N8912N TO TRANSPORT FIVE PASSENGERS TO COLORADO FOR A SINGING COMPETITION. THE PASSENGERS HAD NOT MADE ALTERNATE TRAVEL PLANS. THE PLT RECEIVED A WEATHER BRIEFING, WHICH INDICATED LOW CLOUD CEILINGS, MODERATE TURBULENCE AND ICING ALONG HIS PLANNED ROUTE. HE FILED 10,500 FT AS HIS CRUISING ALT. SUBSEQUENTLY, THE AIRPLANE COLLIDED WITH A 13,700 FT HIGH MOUNTAIN AT ABOUT THE 12,000 FT LEVEL. WEATHER AT THE ACCIDENT SITE WAS IFR. THE PLT WAS NOT INSTRUMENT RATED.
Probable cause
VFR FLIGHT INTO INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS (IMC) BY THE PILOT, AND HIS FAILURE TO MAINTAIN SUFFICIENT ALTITUDE AND CLEARANCE FROM MOUNTAINOUS TERRAIN. FACTORS RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: THE TERRAIN AND WEATHER CONDITIONS, THE PILOT'S OVERCONFIDENCE IN HIS PERSONAL ABILITY, HIS PERCEIVED PRESSURE TO COMPLETE THE FLIGHT, AND HIS LACK OF INSTRUMENT EXPERIENCE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN90FA103
- Event ID
- 20001212X22896
- Case number
- DEN90FA103
- 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: bdf8f755af48a9c405d0a52c2362500cfdf656553fd0896e295397d0264af59f; retrieved 2026-09-21T02:45:17.904Z.