CHI04FA284 · Cessna 182Q
Cessna 182Q · Accident: in flight encounter with weather during initial climb
From Morris Municipal Airport Charlie Schmidt Field (MOX) to New Century AirCenter Airport (IXD)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04FA284
- 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 182Q
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N735VY
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Morris Municipal Airport Charlie Schmidt Field (MOX), Morris, MNTo New Century AirCenter Airport (IXD), Olathe, KS
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 › VFR flight into imc, performed
- Pilot in command › Weather evaluation, 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 airplane impacted terrain about 1.55 nautical miles south of the departure airport. Night instrument meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident. The non-instrument rated pilot contacted Princeton Automated Flight Service Station to file a visual flight rules flight plan. The pilot indicated that he would depart between 0530 and 0545 cdt. The flight plan was never activated. The pilot did not request, nor was he given a standard weather briefing. Records show he did not obtain weather information via a direct user access terminal service. However, the departure airport did have a commercial weather display terminal as well as an on-airport weather radio broadcast. The weather at the time of the accident included broken to overcast ceilings at 500 feet agl and visibilities between 7 and 10 sm. A pilot-rated witness reported seeing an airplane takeoff around the time of the accident. The witness stated that the airplane was about 1/2 sm southeast of the airport at about 200 feet above ground level. The witness remarked that the airplane's climb-out was shallower than a normal departure. The witness reported that there was some ground fog over the tops of the cornfields and in low-lying areas. The witness stated that the sky was not overcast as he observed stars at the time. No pre-impact anomalies were found with the airframe, engine or accessories. The pilot had 7.3 hours of night flight experience, of which 0.3 hours were without a flight instructor. The pilot's last logged night flight was more than two years prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate weather evaluation that resulted flight into night instrument meteorological conditions and a subsequent loss of aircraft control. Factors to the accident were the pilot's lack of recent night experience and the low cloud ceiling at night.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04FA284
- Event ID
- 20041007X01595
- Case number
- CHI04FA284
- 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: 0b11e719740c8d4631998151a807ea812b23f3f15bfd562c6014e49ac90369c1; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:19:39.148Z.