NYC89FA204 · Cessna U206F
Cessna U206F · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE) to Kingston-Ulster Airport (20N)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC89FA204
- 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
- Unknown
Cessna U206F
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N8559Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE), Philadelphia, PATo Kingston-Ulster Airport (20N), Kingston, NY
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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, continued
- Pilot in command › Proper altitude, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PLT WAS REPOSITIONING THE ACFT AT NGT TO HIS HOME ARPT AT KINGSTON. HE RCVD VFR ADVISORIES FM NEW YORK TRACON FOR ROUTING TO TETERBORO & TO CONT NORTH BELOW THE TCA, ALONG THE HUDSON RIVER TO KINGSTON. THE ATC CTLR ISSUED A CLNC AS REQUESTED, PROVIDED WX INFO & TOLD THE PLT TO MAINT 2500'. MINUTES LATER, THE PLT REQUESTED A LOWER ALT & WAS APPROVED FOR FLT THRU THE TETERBORO ARPT TFC AREA. HE RPRTD 'THE GEORGE WASHINGTON BRIDGE IN SIGHT' & SAID HE NO LONGER NEEDED RADAR SVC. AT 2222 EDT, RADAR SVC WAS TERMINATED 2 MI EAST OF TETERBORO & THERE WAS NO FURTHER RADIO CTC WITH THE ACFT. SUBSEQUENTLY, IT HIT TREES & CRASHED NEAR A HILLTOP, WHILE HDG SW OVER AN ARTILLERY RANGE ON THE WEST POINT MILITARY ACADEMY. RADAR DATA SHOWED THAT AFTER RADAR SVC WAS TERMINATED, THE ACFT CONTD NORTH BTN 1800' & 1200' MSL UNTIL RADAR CTC WAS LOST APRX 3 MI SOUTH OF THE ARTILLERY RANGE. A WITNESS (2 MI SOUTH OF THE CRASH SITE) SAW AN ACFT CIRCLING AT LOW ALT BEFORE CONTINUING NORTH. SHE SAID CONDS WERE RAINY, CLOUDY & VERY DARK. NO PREIMPACT MECH PROBLEMS WERE FOUND.
Probable cause
CONTINUED VFR FLIGHT BY THE PILOT INTO AN AREA OF MARGINAL VISUAL METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS, AND HIS FAILURE TO MAINTAIN SUFFICIENT ALTITUDE OVER MOUNTAINOUS/HILLY TERRAIN. FACTORS RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: DARK NIGHT, HIGH TERRAIN, LOW CLOUDS/CEILING, RAIN, AND TREES.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC89FA204
- Event ID
- 20001213X29224
- Case number
- NYC89FA204
- 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 1989-08-29.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 8fbbc2d545a4143a72115b86c22ad351e25c7005a52f040f22b9f7c6273f2789; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:10:36.555Z.