FTW84FA032 · Cessna 182Q
Hawthorne Aviation Service Cessna 182Q · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Imperial County Airport (IPL) to El Paso International Airport (ELP)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW84FA032
- 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
- Unknown
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
- N735CP
- Operator
- Hawthorne Aviation Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Imperial County Airport (IPL), Imperial, CATo El Paso International Airport (ELP), El Paso, TX
- 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
THE NON-INSTRUMENT RATED PLT DEPARTED IMPERIAL, CA, AT 2010 PDT, & SHORTLY THEREAFTER, WAS IDENTIFIED & FOLLOWED BY A U.S. CUSTOMS SPECIAL MISSION ACFT. THE ACFT WAS FOLLOWED TO DEMMING, NM. DURING THAT PORTION OF THE FLT, ITS ALTITUDE VARIED FROM ABOUT 500 FT AGL TO 16,000 FT MSL. AT ONE POINT DURING THE FLT, THE ACFT WAS FLOWN AT NEAR THE STALL SPEED. WHILE EN ROUTE, THE PLT FLEW IN & OUT OFF THE CLOUDS. WHEN HE ARRIVED OVER DEMMING, HE MADE TWO 360 DEG TURNS & WAS OBSERVED IN A DESCENDING SPIRAL THRU 9000 FT. THE ACFT CONTINUED FLYING UNTIL IT IMPACTED A 5200 FT MOUNTAINABOUT 23 MI EAST OF COLUMBUS, NM AT AN ELEVATION OF APRX 4750 FT. IMPACT OCCURRED IN STRAIGHT & LEVEL FLT. AN EXAM OF THE WRECKAGE REVEALED NO EVIDENCE OF A PREIMPACT, MECHANICAL PROBLEM. APRX 40 MI ESE AT EL PASO, TX, THE 0248 MDT WX WAS: 800 FT SCATTERED, 3300 FT BROKEN, VISIBILITY 7 MI (ELEVATION 3956 FT). THE AREA FORECAST CALLED FOR SCATTERED THUNDERSTORMS & RAIN SHOWERS WITH MOUNTAINS OCCASIONALLY OBSCURED.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW84FA032
- Event ID
- 20001214X44825
- Case number
- FTW84FA032
- 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: c08f6405ba72f1cac3dac062e84efef039ab4431f4f6292eda44f63eab6b0e86; retrieved 2026-09-21T05:58:33.958Z.