DEN83FA214 · Cessna R172K
Cessna R172K · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From 2V2 · Longmont, CO to Durango La Plata County Airport (DRO)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN83FA214
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna R172K
- 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
- N758PB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 2V2 · Longmont, COTo Durango La Plata County Airport (DRO), Durango, 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
- 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 › Aircraft handling, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PLT DEPARTED LONGMONT, CO AT ABOUT 0520 MDT. AT 0617 MDT, HE CONTACTED THE DENVER EN ROUTE FLT ADVISORY SERVICE & RECEIVED WX INFO. THE LOCATION OF THE ACFT AT THAT TIME WAS NOT DETERMINED. NO FURTHER RADIO COMMUNICATIONS WERE RECEIVED FROM THE PLT. A SEARCH WAS INITIATED WHEN THE ACFT DID NOT ARRIVE AT ITS DESTINATION. IT WAS FOUND ON 9/9/83 WHERE IT IMPACTED IN MOUNTAINOUS TERRAIN AT AN ELEVATION OF ABOUT 12,500 FT. IMPACT OCCURRED ON STEEP, ROCKY TERRAIN. AN EXAM OF THE WRECKAGE REVEALED THE ACFT HAD CRASHED IN A RIGHT WING LOW, NOSE DOWN ATTITUDE WHILE AT A HIGH RATE OF SPEED. NO EVIDENCE OF A PREIMPACT/MECHANICAL MALFUNCTION OR FAILURE WAS FOUND. THERE WERE NO KNOWN WITNESSES. HOWEVER, PERSONNEL IN THE VICINITY STATED THAT THE SKY WAS OVERCAST, CLOUD BASES WERE AT ABOUT 10,000 FT, THE MOUNTAINS WERE OBSCURED & LIGHT DRIZZLE WAS FALLING.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN83FA214
- Event ID
- 20001214X44496
- Case number
- DEN83FA214
- 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: 25310ad534c268149c6b4f99d58ef35907adf2e0cc6a0ebb17f34577ac20ff8e; retrieved 2026-09-21T06:12:34.155Z.