CHI03FA141 · Cessna 182Q
Cessna 182Q · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Dickinson Theodore Roosevelt Regional Airport (DIK) to Lawrence Municipal Airport (LWC)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI03FA141
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 182Q
- 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
- N630SW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dickinson Theodore Roosevelt Regional Airport (DIK), Dickinson, NDTo Lawrence Municipal Airport (LWC), Lawrence, KS
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spiral, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane, piloted by an instrument rated private pilot, was destroyed on impact with terrain. Instrument meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident. The pilot was fatally injured. No flight plan was on file. A witness stated that he dropped the pilot off at the departure airport for his return flight on June 3, 2003, at about 0730 mountain daylight time. The witness did not see the airplane depart. There was no record of a weather briefing for the accident flight. The flight was reported as missing when it did not return. The pilot had in his possession an expired third class medical certificate with no limitations. His logbook showed an entry for an instrument proficiency check on October 11, 2000, and an entry for a flight review on June 12, 2002. The logbook showed the pilot logged 2.4 hours of actual instrument flight time on October 13, 2000, and logged .4 hours of simulated instrument flight time on June 12, 2002. The airplane had a total time and hobbs time of 2,190.7 hours at that annual inspection. The aircraft impacted terrain nearly vertical. The fuselage was found crushed in an accordion like fashion with the empennage resting on top of the cabin area of the fuselage. The engine was disassembled and the crankshaft was found with a separation on the cheek between the fifth and sixth journals. Engine controls were traced from the cockpit to the engine. Both magnetos produced spark when rotated by hand. The Hobbs meter read 2,224.5 hours on-scene. Flight controls were taken to the coroner's office and were not able to be reviewed on scene. The indicated weather along a direct course was moderate to heavy rain around the time accident. Recorded National Track Analysis Program (NTAP) radar data of a flight in the area the accident site was plotted. The track of the flight was southeast. NTAP data showed that the flight, at 1434:45Z [Zulu], started a climb from a pressure altitude of 5,600 feet to a pressure altitude of 7,700 feet at 1439:33Z. The flight's altitude varied between 7,600 and 7,700 feet of pressure altitude until 1442:09Z. The remaining data points exhibited a pattern in the shape of a descending spiral.
Probable cause
The pilot not maintaining aircraft control in cruise flight leading to his inadvertent spiral. A factor was the pilot's in-flight encounter with moderate to heavy rain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI03FA141
- Event ID
- 20030611X00853
- Case number
- CHI03FA141
- 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: b929d8ffc67f5bab51409d52dbb852bdb23e7546b400f327572cc2df4edc58a6; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:12:16.055Z.