DEN89FA222 · Cessna 172N
France Flying Service Cessna 172N · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Pocatello Regional Airport (PIH) to Rawlins Municipal Airport/Harvey Field (RWL)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN89FA222
- 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
- 2 · 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 172N
- 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
- N739XX
- Operator
- France Flying Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pocatello Regional Airport (PIH), Pocatello, IDTo Rawlins Municipal Airport/Harvey Field (RWL), Rawlins, WY
- 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 › Proper altitude, not maintained
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
AS THE NON-INSTRUMENT RATED PLT WAS RETURNING FROM A X-COUNTRY FLT AT NIGHT, THE ACFT CRASHED ON RISING TERRAIN. IMPACT OCCURRED AT AN ELEVATION OF ABOUT 10,300 FT, NEAR THE TOP OF A MTN RIDGE. NO PREIMPACT PART FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION WAS FOUND. AN INVESTIGATION REVEALED THERE WAS A FAST MOVING COLD FRONT IN THE AREA WITH TSTMS. ABOUT 30 MI SE AT ROCK SPRINGS, WY, THE WX WAS IN PART: 1300 FT BROKEN, 5 MI VIS WITH RAIN, WIND FM 280 DEG AT 17 GUSTING 22 KTS.
Probable cause
THE NON-INSTRUMENT RATED PILOT'S CONTINUED FLIGHT INTO INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS (IMC) AND HIS FAILURE TO MAINTAIN SUFFICIENT ALTITUDE TO CLEAR THE TERRAIN. FACTORS RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: DARKNESS, ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS, AND RISING/MOUNTAINOUS TERRAIN.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN89FA222
- Event ID
- 20001213X29344
- Case number
- DEN89FA222
- 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: 8a898ab11042b61d963b8413ca30a8a79d173b7e4985cffdbb0a45431e53afd0; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:09:01.663Z.