ATL02FA031 · Cessna 441
Cessna 441 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Benjamin Rivera Noriega Airport (CPX) to Luis Munoz Marin International Airport (SJU)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL02FA031
- 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
- 5 · 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 441
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 441
- 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
- N441AW
- Operator
- Alex F. Wojciechowicz · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Benjamin Rivera Noriega Airport (CPX), Culebra, PRTo Luis Munoz Marin International Airport (SJU), San Juan, PR
- 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 › VFR flight into imc, continued
- Pilot in command › Visual lookout, not maintained
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 was on a visual rules flight from Culebra, Puerto Rico to San Juan, Puerto Rico. No flight plan was filed and a weather briefing was not obtained. The pilot contacted San Juan Radar Approach Control 10 miles east of Fajardo, Puerto Rico and the controller stated the airplane was in radar contact 3 miles east of Farjardo airport. The pilot was instructed to enter a right downwind for runway 10 south of plaza Carolina. The pilot acknowledged the transmission and reported he was at 1,600 feet. Two minutes later the controller stated on the radio frequency, radar contact was lost. The airplane was located by ground personnel on the side of El Yunque Mountain. Review of weather data revealed a weak cold front extended over Puerto Rico. Satellite imagery at the time of the accident revealed a band of low clouds obscuring the accident site. A police helicopter pilot who attempted to reach the crash site reported instrument flight conditions. Examination of the airframe, flight controls, engine assemblies and accessories revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
The pilot continued visual flight flight into instrument flight conditions resulting in an in-flight collision with terrain. Low clouds were a factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL02FA031
- Event ID
- 20020108X00044
- Case number
- ATL02FA031
- 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: ecf4bef1a644e48653a19e6d1c1c180dfcfe7143911c90ac11eb358309ce715b; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:15:11.657Z.