SEA04LA038 · Cessna 172N
Avcenter Cessna 172N · Accident: in flight encounter with weather on approach
From Rexburg Madison County Airport (RXE) to Pocatello Regional Airport (PIH)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA04LA038
- 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
- 0 · 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 172N
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N734CB
- Operator
- Avcenter
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rexburg Madison County Airport (RXE), Rexburg, IDTo Pocatello Regional Airport (PIH), Pocatello, 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
- Approach
- 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
- Stall
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Flight into known adverse weather, initiated
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Procedures/directives, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and non-instrument rated private pilot departed Pocatello, Idaho, on an instrument trainer for the private pilot. The instructor had filed an IFR flight plan to Rexburg, Idaho, and acknowledged an awareness of an AIRMET advising of occasional moderate rime to mixed icing-in-clouds below 16,000 feet. En route to Rexburg the aircraft entered a holding pattern at Idaho Falls, Idaho, during which it picked up what the private pilot described as "light" ice and the instructor characterized as a "trace" during the hold. Both pilots reported removing ice from the aircraft following the landing at Rexburg. The student obtained an updated weather brief where icing was again discussed and he filed an IFR flight plan from Rexburg back to Pocatello. The student and instructor then departed Rexburg for Pocatello. During the climb the aircraft began picking up ice and the instructor initially attempted to divert to Idaho Falls but upon breaking out of the clouds and noting the Rigby, Idaho, airport passing abeam, changed his intended landing site to Rigby. During the student's course reversal back toward Rigby the aircraft began descending rapidly eventually stalling prior to ground impact in a snow-covered agricultural field. The Cessna 172N was not equipped with any anti-icing or de-icing equipment with the exception of carburetor heat. The Pilot's Operating Handbook (POH) for the aircraft cautions that "Flight into known icing conditions is prohibited" both as a placard within the aircraft and as a flight limitation.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's failure to follow procedures, i.e., operating the non-icing certified aircraft in known icing conditions contrary to the pilot operators handbook which resulted in ice accretion and ultimately a stall and loss of control in flight. Contributing factors were the icing conditions and degraded aircraft performance.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA04LA038
- Event ID
- 20040205X00166
- Case number
- SEA04LA038
- 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: eaf129f1c7026a5974c1e7f99ee4d999ecfae8e6516d7abb990ee3181fc19ae1; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:19:24.001Z.