IAD05LA051 · Cessna 182N
Cessna 182N · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Morgantown Municipal Airport Walter L. (Bill) Hart Field (MGW) to Toledo Suburban Airport (DUH)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD05LA051
- 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
- 0 · 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 182N
- 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
- N3292S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Morgantown Municipal Airport Walter L. (Bill) Hart Field (MGW), Morgantown, WVTo Toledo Suburban Airport (DUH), Lambertville, MI
- 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
- Stall/mush
- 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
- Flaps › Improper
- Pilot in command › Procedures/directives, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to departure, the pilot received a weather briefing, which included information about a low-pressure area that contained moisture, advisories for icing, and information about the freezing level that existed along his planned route of flight. While en route he was advised by air traffic control of pilot reports of icing, and other aircraft on the assigned radio frequency were reporting ice accretion. He requested lower altitudes and eventually elected to divert to an alternate airport where he performed an instrument approach. During the approach, he extended the flaps, and the airplane began descending at a rate that he could not arrest. The airplane impacted the ground short of the runway, in a wings level attitude and nosed over. The pilot stated that while in flight, he had observed ice adhering to the airframe and the windshield. When an airport employee arrived at the accident site, he estimated that the airplane's leading edges were covered with 1 to 1.5 inches of ice. The emergency procedures section of the owners manual revealed that, although flying into known icing conditions is prohibited, the pilot during an unexpected icing encounter, should plan a landing at the nearest airport, be prepared for a significantly higher stall speed, and to leave the wing flaps retracted.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate in-flight planning/decision which resulted in an encounter with icing conditions and the accretion of ice on the airframe. Also causal was the pilot's improper setting of the flaps in icing conditions in accordance with operating procedures which resulted in a stall/mush.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD05LA051
- Event ID
- 20050413X00448
- Case number
- IAD05LA051
- 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: a336689c249fc2bbab3ab15684d59519017bcf2b72c814cf5e28ab702934441e; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:03:19.035Z.