DEN88FA096 · Piper PA-28-161
Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Provo Municipal Airport (PVU) to St George Regional Airport (SGU)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN88FA096
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-28-161
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N3850M
- Operator
- Sypherd, Shawn D. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Provo Municipal Airport (PVU), Provo, UTTo St George Regional Airport (SGU), ST GEORGE, 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PLT (WITH A RECENT INSTRUMENT RATING) RCVD A WX BRIEFING FM CEDAR CITY (CDC) FSS & FILED AN IFR FLT PLAN FM PROVO (PVU) TO ST GEORGE (SGU). CURRENT SGU WX WASN'T AVAILABLE, BUT WX FOR CDC (ABT 45 MI NNE) WAS PROVIDED. THE PLT WAS ADZDOF MOIST UNSTABLE AIR, RAIN, OBSCURED MTNS & CUMULUS CLOUDS ALONG THE ROUTE. ALSO, HE WAS ADZD OF A PIREP CONCERNING AN ENCTR WITH CLR ICG NR CDC AT 13,000'. APCHG MILFORD AT 11,000', THE PILOT CALLED CDC FSS & RCVD A WX UPDATE. CURRENT SGU WX WAS STILL NOT AVAILABLE, BUT HE WAS ADZD OF THUNDERSTORMS EN ROUTE. HE RETURNED TO ARTCC FREQ, GOT CLNC TO DESCEND TO 10,000', THEN TO CLIMB TO 12,000'. SOON THEREAFTER, RADIO AND RADAR CONTACT WERE LOST. SUBSEQUENTLY, THE ACFT BROKE UP IN FLT (WINGS & STABILIZERS SEPD) & WRECKAGE WAS SCATTERED OVER A 1-1/4 MI AREA. NO PRE-ACCIDENT CRACKS OR FATIGUE WAS FOUND. AN AIRCRAFT WAS SEEN FLYING INTO A WX CELL. GROUND WITNESSES THEN HEARD AN EXPLOSIVE NOISE AND SAW PARTS OF THE AIRCRAFT FALLING FM THE WX CELL. SOON THEREAFTER, PEA SIZE HAIL FELL FM THE CLOUD.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN88FA096
- Event ID
- 20001213X25449
- Case number
- DEN88FA096
- 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: ae6e76c6186283575efd24b7f4852215e74b1bd9722ec04fe82cd762a91b4294; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:45:40.966Z.