DEN84FA295 · Cessna 205
Cessna 205 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Great Falls International Airport (GTF) to Geraldine Airport (5U8)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN84FA295
- 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
- 3 · 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 205
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 205
- 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
- N8435Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Great Falls International Airport (GTF), Great Falls, MTTo Geraldine Airport (5U8), GERALDINE, MT
- 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
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
AT 0053 MDT, THE PLT RADIOED GREAT FALLS FSS & REQUESTED WX INFO. HE WAS ADVISED OF IFR CONDITIONS & WAS PROVIDED THE LATEST OBSERVATION. THE PLT REQUESTED & WAS PROVIDED A SPECIAL VFR CLEARANCE TO DEPART TO THE EAST. HE TOOK OFF AT 0100 MDT & REPORTED OVER MALMSTROM AFB (OUTSIDE THE CONTROLLED AIRSPACE) AT 0106. NO FURTHER RADIO TRANSMISSIONS WERE RECEIVED FROM THE ACFT. SUBSEQUENTLY, THE ACFT IMPACTED RISING TERRAIN AT AN ELEVATION OF ABOUT 3500 FT & APRX 8 FT BELOW THE EDGE OF A PLATEAU. THE CRASH SITE WAS LOCATED ABOUT 400 FT ABOVE THE VALLEY FLOOR. AN EXAM REVEALED EVIDENCE THAT THE ACFT WAS IN A SLIGHT LEFT WING LOW, NOSE LEVEL ATTITUDE & WAS TRAVELING AT HIGH SPEED. NO PREIMPACT PART FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION WAS FOUND. A TOXICOLOGICAL TEST OF THE PLT'S BLOOD SHOWED AN ALCOHOL LEVEL OF 0.083%. ABOUT 15 MI WEST AT MALMSTROM AFB, THE 0125 MDT WX WAS IN PART: 900 FT BROKEN, 2000 FT OVERCAST, 7 MI VISIBILITY WITH FOG & LIGHT RAIN. THE ELEVATION AT MALMSTROM WAS 3000 FT MSL.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN84FA295
- Event ID
- 20001214X41027
- Case number
- DEN84FA295
- 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: 3260527846f2e4494865290c7cf6109d0c4fbf4727aca6fb0f7136c735698176; retrieved 2026-09-21T05:19:38.390Z.