SEA83FA057 · Cessna TU206G
Cessna TU206G · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC) to Idaho Falls Regional Airport (IDA)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA83FA057
- 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
- 0
- 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 TU206G
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N4606U
- Operator
- Victor O. Hegsted, JR · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC), Salt Lake City, UTTo Idaho Falls Regional Airport (IDA), Idaho Falls, ID
- 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 › Aircraft handling, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A SEARCH FOR THE AIRCRAFT WAS BEGUN AFTER THE PILOT'S RELATIVES REPORTED IT WAS OVERDUE AND RESIDENTS NEAR THE CRASH SITE HEARD THE SOUNDS OF A LOW FLYING PLANE SUDDENLY TERMINATE. UNOFFICIAL REPORTS OF THE WEATHER INDICATED IT WAS ABOUT 200 FT OBSCURED, 1/4 MI VISIBILITY WITH HEAVY SNOW, TEMP 30 DEG, WIND 200 DEG AT 5 KTS. THE AIRCRAFT WAS FOUND IN FEBRUARY 1983 BY A CROSS-COUNTRY SKIER. AN INVESTIGATION REVEALED IT HAD CRASHED AT HIGH SPEED IN A NEAR VERTICAL DIVE. THE NON-INSTRUMENT RATED PILOT HAD NOT FILED A FLIGHT PLAN AND NO RECORD OF A WEATHER BRIEFING WAS FOUND. THERE WERE NO COMMUNICATIONS WITH THE PILOT AFTER HE DEPARTED THE SALT LAKE CITY AREA. HE HAD BEEN ASSIGNED A DISCRETE TRANSPONDER CODE DURING DEPARTURE AND HAD NOT CHANGED THE CODE, THUS A RADAR TRACK WAS OBTAINED. THE RADAR SHOWED A CONTINUOUS TRACK TO THE AREA OF THE ACCIDENT, THEN WAS INTERMITTENTLY LOST AND REMAINED IN "BOBS AND WEAVES" UNTIL IT DISAPPEARED. NO PREIMPACT/MECHANICAL MALFUNCTION OR FAILURES WERE FOUND.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA83FA057
- Event ID
- 20020917X05135
- Case number
- SEA83FA057
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1982-11-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1729f03be9e089bc3574908bec78e8389b847a371c2188e88f9d94f11d0f85c9; retrieved 2026-09-21T07:29:27.517Z.