FTW02FA130 · Piper PA-34-200T
Piper PA-34-200T · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Cal Black Memorial Airport (U96) to U42 · Salt Lake City, UT
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW02FA130
- 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
Piper PA-34-200T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-34
- 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
- N132CP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cal Black Memorial Airport (U96), Halls Crossing, UTTo U42 · Salt Lake City, UT
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, continued
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While enroute, the instrument-rated pilot requested to air traffic control a GPS instrument approach to the intended destination airport; however, ATC denied the request due to traffic and the low cloud bases in the area. The pilot then requested an IFR clearance to an alternate airport. ATC cleared the pilot for an ILS approach to an alternate airport. The pilot then reported to air traffic control that when able, he would cancel the IFR clearance and proceed to the intended destination airport under VFR. Witnesses observed the airplane flying northbound towards the intended destination airport and operating "low, fast and it's landing gear was up." They observed the weather to be "very rainy, and foggy and the visibility was poor." The airplane continued to the north and disappeared instantly into the fog and clouds. The 3,864-hour pilot was found to be familiar with the route of flight having completed approximately 370 flights between the departure and destination airports. No distress calls were received from the pilot prior to the accident. The airplane impacted trees and the terrain at an elevation of approximately 5,675 feet msl. During examination of the wreckage, no aircraft or engine anomalies were noted that would have prevented normal operations.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance with terrain and continued flight into known adverse weather conditions. Contributing factors were the fog and rain weather conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW02FA130
- Event ID
- 20020502X00612
- Case number
- FTW02FA130
- 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: 7ea6df95648487050fd29c984d60fc652d92eee29e046f0cb3f17dfca659f165; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:02:13.518Z.