DEN04FA104 · Cessna 172I
Cessna 172I · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Paris Municipal Airport (7M6) to Ozark Franklin County Airport (7M5)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN04FA104
- 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 172I
- 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
- N46174
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Paris Municipal Airport (7M6), Paris, ARTo Ozark Franklin County Airport (7M5), Ozark, AR
- 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 · descent
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Pilot in command › Flight into adverse weather, attempted
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness who lived next to the airport said he heard the airplane at about 0530, but did not see the airplane. The witness said it was foggy, that you could not see beyond 50 feet. The witness said that the airplane sounded normal - "running like they revved it [the airplane] up for takeoff." He couldn't see because of the fog. He then heard a sound like something hitting a building. The witness said that later he left his house on personal business. When he came back, he drove into the pasture and found the airplane. A weather station 33 nautical miles west of the accident site reported a 300 foot ceiling, surface visibility of 5 statute miles and mist, temperature 72 degrees Fahrenheit (F), dew point 71 degrees F, winds 040 degrees at 4 knots, and altimeter 30.10 inches. A weather station 30 nautical miles east of the accident site reported clear skies, a surface visibility of 6 statute miles and mist, temperature 68 degrees F, dew point 68 degrees F, calm winds, and altimeter 30.12 inches. The weather conditions at the time of the accident for the airport located 1/2 mile east of the accident site, was calm winds and a temperature and dew point of 69 degrees F. A local police officer observed the weather on the airport approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes before the accident. He described it as fog with a visibility of approximately 1/8 of a mile or less. An examination of the airplane's systems revealed no anomalies. The pilot's autopsy report stated, "... The degree of observed heart disease present can cause sudden and unexpected symptoms. There were no findings present, however, which would necessarily indicate that such symptoms did occur. ..." According to the Aeronautical Information Manual, "Somatogravic illusion" is a condition described where, "A rapid acceleration during takeoff can create the illusion of being in a nose up attitude. The disoriented pilot will push the aircraft into a nose low, or dive attitude. A rapid deceleration by a quick reduction of the throttles can have the opposite effect, with the disoriented pilot pulling the aircraft into a nose up or stall attitude." This illusion usually occurs at night or in instrument meteorological conditions.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate preflight preparation, his attempted flight into adverse weather conditions, and his failure to maintain clearance from the trees resulting in the airplane's collision with the trees and subsequent impact with the ground. Factors contributing to the accident were the fog, the low altitude, the pilot's inability to see objects and the terrain, and the trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN04FA104
- Event ID
- 20040714X00975
- Case number
- DEN04FA104
- 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: 1f642c59c1b371082afb9e3ab46ef5646221e7fc93f0a89067196063f21948fa; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:25:16.489Z.