DEN89FA184 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water
From 4AC · Albuquerque, NM to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN89FA184
- 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
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
- N64263
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 4AC · Albuquerque, NMTo not recorded
- 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
- Other
- 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 collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Suicide
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
DRG THE FLT, THE ACFT FLEW INTO THE WEST FACE OF THE SANDIA MOUNTAINS AT ABOUT THE 9000 FT LEVEL. BEFORE THE COLLISION, THE STUDENT PILOT CONTACTED ALBUQUERQUE APCH CONTROL & STATED THAT HE WAS FLYING EASTBOUND OVER THE RIO GRANDE RIVER & WAS GOING INTO THE WEST SIDE OF THE MOUNTAINS. HE REQUESTED THAT HIS FRIEND IN MISSOURI BE CALLED & PROVIDED THE PHONE NUMBER AS WELL AS SPELLING THE NAMES OF HIS FRIEND & HIMSELF. WHEN THE CONTROLLER INQUIRED ABOUT THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM, THE PLT DID NOT SPECIFY. LATER, A SUICIDE NOTE WAS FOUND AT THE PLT'S HOME & FRIENDS REPORTED HE HAD BEEN VERY DESPONDENT SINCE SEPARATION FROM HIS WIFE IN MARCH 1989.
Probable cause
THE PILOT DELIBERATELY FLEW HIS AIRCRAFT INTO THE FACE OF A MOUNTAIN. A CONTRIBUTING FACTOR WAS: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITION OF THE PILOT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN89FA184
- Event ID
- 20001213X29090
- Case number
- DEN89FA184
- 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: d69730e1ead9d28c17967b1d72fd6ee5989267195f9e1f592d7a304086ebe743; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:12:23.410Z.