SEA83FA208 · Cessna 182N
Cessna 182N · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Glacier Park International Airport (FCA) to Billings Logan International Airport (BIL)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA83FA208
- 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 182N
- 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
- N92368
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Glacier Park International Airport (FCA), Kalispell, MTTo Billings Logan International Airport (BIL), Billings, MT
- 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
- 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
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 on an instrument flight plan on a route where mountain obscuration, clouds, precipitation, and possible icing conditions had been forecast. Although the pilot had been cleared to 12,000 feet, he reported that he was having trouble climbing above 11,000 feet. Soon thereafter he reported that he was reversing course and returning to the airport of departure. Although the air traffic controller told him he could not clear him below 11,000 feet, the pilot reported that the aircraft was continuing to descend. The last clearly audible report from the pilot was that he was down to 8,800 feet, and another pilot in the area reported that he thought he heard the pilot say he had descended to 6,200 feet. Soon thereafter the aircraft impacted the mountainous terrain in an area where other aircraft were then reporting airframe icing conditions.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from the terrain while attempting to maneuver back to the departure airport after encountering icing conditions. Factors include icing conditions, mountainous terrain, and low ceilings.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA83FA208
- Event ID
- 20020904X01525
- Case number
- SEA83FA208
- 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: 760175cc3d0048c6fcf804b7d14710495e4c1b91b15447b65cf3e58502d247a2; retrieved 2026-09-21T06:12:23.164Z.