DEN83FA072 · Piper PA-28-181
Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Yellowstone Regional Airport (COD) to Ogden Hinckley Airport (OGD)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN83FA072
- 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
Piper PA-28-181
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N8406F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Yellowstone Regional Airport (COD), Cody, WYTo Ogden Hinckley Airport (OGD), Ogden, UT
- 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
- Wire, transmission
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Clearance, misjudged
- Pilot in command › Proper altitude, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
WHEN EN ROUTE, THE ACFT COLLIDED WITH POWER LINES WHERE THEY CROSSED OVER A HIGHWAY ABOUT 39 FT AGL. TWO WITNESSES NEAR THIS LOCATION REPORTED THAT THE ACFT WAS FLYING LOW & WAS FOLLOWING THE HIGHWAY ON A WESTERLY HEADING WHEN THE ACFT STRUCK THE WIRES. THE WIRE STRIKE OCCURRED AS THE ACFT WAS STARTING TO CROSS A VALLEY ABOUT 8 MI WIDE. SUBSEQUENTLY, THE ACFT CRASHED INTO RISING TERRAIN ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE VALLEY. WITNESSES IN CARS NEAR THAT AREA STATED THAT THE ACFT WAS FLYING LOW OVER THE HIGHWAY & WAS ZIG-ZAGGING BACK & FORTH. JUST PRIOR TO CRASHING, THEY SAW THE ACFT GO INTO A STEEP BANK, THEN IT DISAPPEARED FROM THEIR VIEW AS IT WENT BEHIND A HILL. AN EXAM OF THE CRASH SITE REVEALED THAT THE ACFT WAS IN NEAR LEVEL FLT WHEN IT HIT TREES ON THE SIDE OF A HILL, THEN IT CRASHED INTO A 9 DEG RISING SLOPE. THE PLT WAS SERIOUSLY INJURED & COULD NOT RECALL THE FLT OR THE ACCIDENT. WITNESSES STATED THAT THE ACCIDENT OCCURRED ON A DARK NIGHT WITH LOW CEILINGS & WITH LIGHT SNOW FALLING.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN83FA072
- Event ID
- 20001214X42392
- Case number
- DEN83FA072
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1983-03-06.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 13ad5cc8dc4c86ea7b4d36391285f71fadd321323201362320da28c32aa4e2d7; retrieved 2026-09-21T07:06:15.104Z.