DEN02FA004 · Cessna T337G
Cessna T337G · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Centennial Airport (APA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN02FA004
- 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
- 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 T337G
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 337
- 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
- N45E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Centennial Airport (APA), Centennial Arpt, COTo not recorded
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Visual lookout, restricted
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed Centennial Airport (elevation 5,883 feet) VFR to practice multiple instrument approaches at night. He told his wife that he would turn the cockpit lights up bright to facilitate instrument training. After two ILS approaches, he requested, from ATC, two turns in the holding pattern before flying additional approaches. The ATC controller cleared him for the practice holding, and assigned him to fly at 9,000 feet. During the inbound track (347 degrees), radar data indicated that the airplane descended from its assigned altitude to 7,600 feet with no ATC intervention. Next, the pilot requested to depart the initial approach fix to the southeast for approximately 15 nm at 8,500 feet. The ATC controller cleared the request, but didn't terminate radar services. The pilot flew south for approximately 8nm, then turned to 210 degrees. He impacted the mountain approximately 5 minutes later.
Probable cause
the pilot intentionally restricting his external vision (turning his cabin lights up bright to practice night instrument approaches), and his subsequent failure to maintain clearance of the mountain. A contributing factor was the Air Traffic Controller’s failure to provide appropriate safety alerts for rising terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN02FA004
- Event ID
- 20011109X02221
- Case number
- DEN02FA004
- 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 2001-10-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 28cb27f681923d6e9db5834ef3267d946b95c69262e9de3bad3ff7fd06ec9063; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:18:52.125Z.