NYC04FA157 · Lake LA-4-200
Lake LA-4-200 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Plattsburgh International Airport (PBG) to Concord Municipal Airport (CON)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC04FA157
- 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
Lake LA-4-200
- Aircraft type
- Lake LA-4
- 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
- N6248V
- Operator
- Stephen Young
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Plattsburgh International Airport (PBG), Plattsburgh, NYTo Concord Municipal Airport (CON), Concord, NH
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
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 departed under visual flight rules (VFR) and was flying under a cloud layer at an altitude that was approximately 500-800 feet above the trees. When the VFR conditions worsened, he "stayed on instruments," at an altitude of 3,500 feet msl, and shortly thereafter, the airplane impacted terrain, approximately 500 feet from the summit of a 2,937-foot mountain. When asked what caused the accident, the pilot stated, "Controlled flight into terrain." Witnesses reported at the time of the accident, the mountain was obscured by a cloud layer from its summit, down to about 2,000 feet, and the lateral visibility was approximately 200 feet. Examination of the airplane revealed no pre-impact mechanical deficiencies. The pilot received his instrument rating 5 years prior to the accident, and had logged a total of 5.4 hours of instrument time during 4 flights since then. The pilot's most recent instrument experience was 3 years prior to the accident, when he logged 0.5 hours of actual instrument time.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued VFR flight into IMC conditions, and his failure to maintain terrain clearance, which resulted in a controlled flight into terrain. Factors in the accident were the low cloud ceiling and the pilot's lack of recent instrument time.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC04FA157
- Event ID
- 20040715X00978
- Case number
- NYC04FA157
- 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: b705adaba4e759762eb34fdd7dd13bcb2e2027cd83677b2b57bfe563ad53e066; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:25:36.395Z.