DEN86FA252 · Cessna 172M
Tri-County FLT School Cessna 172M · Accident: abrupt maneuver en route
From Goodland Municipal Airport (GLD) to Brighton Van-Aire Estates Airport (CO12)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN86FA252
- 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
- N1691V
- Operator
- Tri-County FLT School
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Goodland Municipal Airport (GLD), Goodland, KSTo Brighton Van-Aire Estates Airport (CO12), Brighton, 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
- Abrupt maneuver
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PLT, A BAIL BONDSMAN, FLEW TO GOODLAND, KS, REPORTEDLY IN SEARCH OF AN ACCUSED FELON. ON THE AFTERNOON OF THE ACCIDENT, THE PLT OBTAINED A WX BRIEFING FROM THE FSS AND FILED A VFR FLT PLAN BACK TO THE BRIGHTON-VAN AIRE AIRPORT IN COLORADO. WX WAS CAVU. THE PLT WAS SEEN TO DEPART ALONE FROM GOODLAND AT 1509 CDT. THE PLT CONTACTED DENVER A/C, WAS IDENTIFIED ON RADAR, TOLD TO TURN TO A HEADING OF 320 DEG, TOLD TO PROCEED DIRECT TO VAN AIRE AND REMAIN IN VFR CONDITIONS BELOW THE FLOOR OF THE TCA. THE PLT REPORTED LEVEL AT 7000 FT MSL. RADIO/RADAR CONTACT WAS LOST SHORTLY THEREAFTER AT 1633:33 MDT. EXAMINATION OF THE WRECKAGE DISCLOSED NO EVIDENCE OF AIRFRAME, ENG, PROP, FLT CONTROL, OR SYSTEMS FAILURE/MALFUNCTION PRIOR TO THE ACCIDENT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN86FA252
- Event ID
- 20001213X34760
- Case number
- DEN86FA252
- 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: 275c2a747a561017d54f067c3780c31d9b39130349a8579ec396ff4d684c1b2a; retrieved 2026-09-21T04:23:45.144Z.