DEN01FA045 · Cessna 182K
Cessna 182K · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From 48V · Erie, CO to 00V · Colorado Sprgs, CO
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN01FA045
- 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
- 2 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 182K
- 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
- N2898R
- Operator
- Tassilo J. Bilka · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 48V · Erie, COTo 00V · Colorado Sprgs, 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 · descent
- 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 › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to radar data, at 1729:09, the airplane departed on a night cross-country flight and its transponder was sending a 1200 (VFR) code. There were no records found of the flight contacting air traffic control, nor was it required to do so. The airplane climbed to 9,200 feet and flew toward the destination airport. At 1756:53, the airplane initiated a 250 foot per minute rate of descent. At 1800:55, the final radar image was received 11 miles north of the destination airport, at 8,200 feet msl (500 feet agl). Prior to the last radar return, the airplane had been in a steady, gradual descent. The accident site was located approximately 8 miles north-northeast of the destination airport. A witness, who lives near the accident site, reported that at the time of the accident dense fog conditions were occurring and the visibility was less than 50 yards. Review of weather observations revealed that the flight departed in visual meteorological conditions and the weather conditions deteriorated to instrument meteorological conditions as the flight progressed toward the destination airport. During the one hour time period surrounding the accident, the weather at the nearest observation facility to the accident site changed from a few clouds at 300 feet, scattered clouds at 1,300 feet, visibility 3 miles in fog, and a 1 degree temperature dew point spread, to broken clouds at 200 feet and a 0 degree temperature dew point spread. No record of the pilot receiving a pre-flight weather briefing from a flight service station was found. The airframe and engine were examined and no pre-impact anomalies were found that would have precluded their operation.
Probable cause
the pilot's continued visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC), which resulted in an in-flight collision with terrain. Contributing factors to the accident were the low clouds, reduced visibilities due to fog, and the dark night light condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN01FA045
- Event ID
- 20010130X00372
- Case number
- DEN01FA045
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2001-01-25.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 155c43215477610c303fba1702078de9aeea1746446819f895b900a30a8812d9; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:40:50.577Z.