DEN88FA014 · Cessna 340A
Cessna 340A · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Centennial Airport (APA) to Buena Vista, CO
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN88FA014
- 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 340A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 340
- 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
- N4132G
- Operator
- Harmon, James M. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Centennial Airport (APA), Englewood, COTo Buena Vista, CO
- 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
- Fuel contamination
- 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, attempted
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
- Weather condition › Turbulence, clear air
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE AIRCRAFT CRASHED ON THE SIDE OF A MOUNTAIN DURING VISUAL METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS. THE PILOT HAD BEEN IN VOICE AND RADAR CONTACT WITH AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL UNTIL THE AIRCRAFT DISAPPEARED FROM RADAR. THE PILOT REPORTED SEVERE TURBULENCE AND A ROUGH RUNNING ENGINE TO ATC AS HE WAS NEARING A MOUNTAIN PASS. THE PILOT STATED THAT HE THOUGHT THE ROUGH RUNNING ENGINE WAS DUE TO FUEL CONTAMINATION. A WITNESS REPORTED THAT THE PILOT HAD SAID THE FUEL HAD CONTAINED ALOT OF WATER. THE PILOT REPORTED TO ATC THAT HE HAD JUST LOST THE ENGINE AND HE WAS ATTEMPTING TO MAKE IT THROUGH A SADDLE. A SIGMET HAD BEEN ISSUED FOR THAT REGION AND THE SEVERE TURBULENCE WAS CONFIRMED BY ANOTHER PILOT. ENGINE TEARDOWN REVEALED NO EVIDENCE OF PREIMPACT MECHANICAL FAILURE/MALFUNCTION.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN88FA014
- Event ID
- 20001213X32296
- Case number
- DEN88FA014
- 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: 9c8894b928bed7335a82450ce78aa1fdaef5da09a5054c69a7dafe4b2c0b730e; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:56:16.690Z.