DEN01LA130 · Cessna 172RG
Cessna 172RG · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Gunnison Crested Butte Regional Airport (GUC) to Austin Bergstrom International Airport (AUS)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN01LA130
- 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
- 0 · 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172RG
- 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
- N401TA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gunnison Crested Butte Regional Airport (GUC), Gunnison, COTo Austin Bergstrom International Airport (AUS), Austin, 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 · 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 collision with terrain/water
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Pilot in command › Proper climb rate, not attained
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 the pilot, after takeoff, he climbed to 9,700 feet msl in order to cross the mountains. The airplane then encountered a "300 foot updraft, and then a 2,000 foot downdraft." He decided to "land the plane without the use of the landing gear on the side of the mountain." One of the passengers said it was the pilot's first mountain flying experience. He remembered the airplane was at 80 knots and 8,300 feet as they approached a mountain. He said the pilot pulled back on the control yoke in an attempt to gain sufficient altitude to clear the peak but the airplane was slow in responding and "we literally came straight down" and "the belly [struck the ground] pretty hard." According to rescue personnel, the accident site was at 8,510 feet. The straight line distance between the airport and the accident site was 9 nm. The difference in accident elevation and airport elevation (8,510 - 7,673) was 837 feet. The computed climb rate was 93 feet per nm. Estimated airplane weight was 2,670 pounds at takeoff (maximum certificated gross weight is 2,650 pounds). The altimeter setting was 30.49 inches of mercury, and the computed pressure altitude was 7,103 feet msl. Referring to the Cessna 172RG "Maximum Rate of Climb" chart and interpolating, it was computed that the airplane was capable of achieving a climb rate of 464 fpm (feet per minute) and, at a climb speed of 79 knots, it was capable of climbing 352.4 feet per nm.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to attain the proper climb rate, and his improper inflight planning/decision to attempt to cross mountainous terrain at an inadequate altitude. Contributing factors were the downdraft and the pilot's total lack of experience in mountain flying.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN01LA130
- Event ID
- 20010807X01621
- Case number
- DEN01LA130
- 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, coordinates. 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: c1d4be20cd02d0798eaaa14f778721526f05d106698008c35215dc993952e0e8; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:57:25.178Z.