MIA90FA031 · Cessna 170A
Cessna 170A · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Valley View Airport (VA87) to McGhee Tyson Airport (TYS)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA90FA031
- 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 170A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 170
- 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
- N9192A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Valley View Airport (VA87), Manassas, VATo McGhee Tyson Airport (TYS), Knoxville, TN
- 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 › Aircraft control, uncontrolled
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
DURING THE PILOT'S INITIAL WX BRIEFING AT 1101, HE WAS ADVISED VFR FLIGHT NOT RECOMMENDED THROUGH MOUNTAINS UNTIL COLD FRONT HAD PASSED. DURING A LATER 1331 WX BRIEFING HE WAS INFORMED THAT WX CONDITIONS WERE DETERIORATING SOUTH OF ROANOKE, VA, THROUGH HIS DESTINATION AIRPORT. THERE WERE FLT PRECAUTIONS FOR LIGHT-MODERATE RIME ICING FROM FREEZING LEVEL OF 8,500 FT TO 12,500 FT. LATER AN UNIDENTIFIED ACFT WAS OBSERVED ON RADAR CIRCLING AT 8,500 FT, THEN DESCEND TO 5,500 FT, THEN HEAD SOUTHWESTBOUND NEXT TO THE FINAL APPROACH COURSE FOR ILS RWY 23 AT TRI-CITY REGIONAL AIRPORT. IT THEN TURNED WESTBOUND AT 1810 BEFORE DISAPPEARING FROM RADAR. THE AIRPLANE WAS OBSERVED DESCENDING ALONG A RIDGELINE; GROUND FOG TOTALLY OBSCURED THE TOPS. THE AIRCRAFT IMPACTED TERRAIN AT ABOUT A 90-DEGREE NOSE-DOWN ATTITUDE. PILOT'S TOTAL RECORDED NIGHT TIME WAS 5.5 HRS; LAST FLIGHT 1/89. LAST BIENNIAL 29 MONTHS BEFORE ACCIDENT. PILOT HAD PREVIOUSLY SPOKE OF 'PUSHING THE LIMITS' IN REGARD TO FLYING IN MARGINAL WX CONDITIONS.
Probable cause
CONTINUED FLIGHT INTO INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS BY A NON-INSTRUMENT RATED PILOT RESULTING IN SPATIAL DISORIENTATION AND A LOSS OF AIRCRAFT CONTROL. FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: THE PILOT'S OVERCONFIDENCE IN HIS ABILITY TO FLY IN INSTRUMENT CONDITIONS, THE ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS, THE DARK NIGHT, AND THE PILOT'S LACK OF NIGHT FLYING EXPERIENCE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA90FA031
- Event ID
- 20001213X29836
- Case number
- MIA90FA031
- 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: e1e8421126cc106b031d52febed5c20e57e0df7d36b71c3b7339b85e1519b667; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:04:16.949Z.