SEA04FA088 · Cessna A185F
Cessna A185F · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Burley Municipal Airport (BYI) to Olinger Airpark (OR81)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA04FA088
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna A185F
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 185
- 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
- N61611
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Burley Municipal Airport (BYI), Burley, IDTo Olinger Airpark (OR81), Hillsboro, OR
- 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 control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
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 was completing the final leg of a cross-country flight that originated earlier in the day. Approximately 44 miles west of Boise, Idaho, the pilot received an in-flight weather update for the route of flight. The weather specialist advised the pilot of areas of thunderstorms, icing and mountain obscuration along the intended route of flight. The specialist informed the pilot that VFR flight was not recommended in areas of higher terrain. After receiving the weather update, the pilot informed the specialist that he could see the convective activity ahead of him. After failing to arrive at the planned destination, an Alert Notice (ALNOT) was issued for the missing airplane. The airplane wreckage was later located in mountainous terrain approximately 40 miles southeast of the pilot's planned destination. Widespread areas of instrument meteorological conditions were reported along the pilot's route of flight.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate in-flight planning/decision which resulted in VFR flight into IMC, and his failure to maintain control. Factors include mountain obscuration, clouds and convective weather conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA04FA088
- Event ID
- 20040524X00649
- Case number
- SEA04FA088
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2004-05-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 533a3d8950fc0bb0231c9b4bfe2b37f318ba3c806e677735cc2fb2bde07a5d2e; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:28:40.546Z.