DEN86FA254 · Cessna 182Q
Cessna 182Q · Accident: in flight encounter with weather during initial climb
From Ogallala Municipal Airport Searle Field (OGA) to 1V5 · Boulder, CO
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN86FA254
- 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 182Q
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N735GN
- Operator
- Gregory/Leibovic
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ogallala Municipal Airport Searle Field (OGA), Ogallala, NETo 1V5 · Boulder, 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
- Initial climb
- 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 › Altitude, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, initiated
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PLT AND HIS PAX HAD FLOWN TO OGALLALA, NE, FOR BOATING AND WATER SKIING. THE NEXT DAY THE PLT CALLED HIS WIFE WHO REMINDED HIM OF AN ENGAGEMENT THAT EVENING. THE PLT CALLED THE FSS 5 DIFFERENT TIMES AND EACH TIME WAS TOLD VFR FLT WAS NOT RECOMMENDED. HE TOLD A FRIEND THAT HE WOULD FOLLOW THE INTERSTATE HIGHWAY BACK TO BOULDER, CO. IF HE COULDN'T MAKE IT, HE WOULD TURN AROUND AND COME BACK. HE SAID HE COULD ALWAYS LAND ON THE HIGHWAY IN AN EMERGENCY. THE PLT AND HIS PAX DEPARTED AT 1500 HRS. A WITNESS DESCRIBED THE WX AS LOW CEILING, REDUCED VISIBILITY, AND LIGHT DRIZZLE. THE WRECKAGE WAS DISCOVERED THE FOLLOWING MORNING 0.5 MI SOUTH OF INTERSTATE HIGHWAY AND 33 MI WEST OF OGALLALA. THE ACFT CRASHED ON A HEADING BACK TO OGALLALA. THE ACFT CLOCK HAD STOPPED AT 3:18 HRS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN86FA254
- Event ID
- 20001213X34761
- Case number
- DEN86FA254
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: 7ce5583d4841e564bd8daf92808ca338a73417265e91f610fab5b23c4a38c5ae; retrieved 2026-09-21T04:23:41.841Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure. The narrative states the pilot "HAD FLOWN TO OGALLALA, NE" and departed from there, crashing 33 mi west of Ogallala; OGA is Searle Field, Ogallala, Nebraska, so the 'NV' state is a typo.