DEN83FA059 · Cessna 340A
Cessna 340A · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From an unrecorded airport to 4CO · South Bend, IN
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN83FA059
- 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
- 4 · 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
- N33340
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 4CO · South Bend, IN
- 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 · climb to 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 › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
- Pilot in command › VFR procedures, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
PRIOR TO DEPARTURE THE FLT WAS GIVEN AN IFR CLEARANCE WHICH BEGAN AT HERLS INTERSECTION (16 MI NNE) & TO CROSS HERLS AT OR ABOVE 16,000 FT MSL. DEPARTURE ARPT FIELD ELEV IS 7,793 FT. FLTS ARE REQUIRED TO PROCEED VFR TO THE INITIAL FIX OF THE IFR CLEARANCE. AFTER TAKEOFF THE ACFT WAS OBSERVED HEADING NE TOWARD THE MOUNTAINS. ACFT DEPARTING ASPEN USUALLY FLYA NORTHERN HEADING, THEN TURN NE AFTER CLEARING THE MOUNTAINS. WITNESSES STATED THAT THE WEATHER WAS GOOD IN THE VALLEY NORTH OF THE ARPT, BUT THE MOUNTAIN TOPS EAST OF THE ARPT WERE OBSCURED BY LOW CLOUDS. THE ACFT CRASHED 3-1/2 MI NE OF THE ARPT AT THE 9,000 FT LEVEL OF AN 11,000 FT MOUNTAIN. THE LAST TIME THE PLT HAD FLOWN INTO ASPEN WAS IN 1980.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN83FA059
- Event ID
- 20001214X42176
- Case number
- DEN83FA059
- 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: 65d7e390a6b0fd8294ed5285c36d442bc168bd9cfc6311ecc42b96d52c6ab9e3; retrieved 2026-09-21T07:10:13.107Z.