SEA04FA190 · Cessna U206F
Cessna U206F · Accident: in flight encounter with weather while maneuvering
From Pistol Creek, ID to Stanley Airport (2U7)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA04FA190
- 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 U206F
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N20GV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pistol Creek, IDTo Stanley Airport (2U7), Stanley, 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
- 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 flight of two aircraft departed a private airstrip in an area of mountainous terrain. While en route to their destination, the flight encountered low clouds and fog. The pilot of the accident aircraft radioed to the other pilot that the clouds were "pretty low" in the valley that he was attempting to go through. The other pilot asked the accident pilot if he could turn around. The accident pilot stated that he was too low, followed by that there was fog clear to the ground. Shortly thereafter, communications with the accident pilot were lost. The wreckage was found in an area of mountainous terrain. The wreckage was positioned in an approximate 30 degrees nose down attitude to the terrain with the aft end of the fuselage raised off the ground. The empennage section was folded over to the left side. No evidence of a mechanical failure or malfunction was noted during the post accident examination of the wreckage.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate in-flight planning/decision which resulted in VFR flight into IMC, and his failure to maintain aircraft control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA04FA190
- Event ID
- 20040920X01467
- Case number
- SEA04FA190
- 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 2004-09-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 568694b01c074bc336d30f0a6a4b3d5bb5cc0b4307dd329d176493b69a1b1efd; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:20:24.844Z.