ATL05LA105 · Cessna T182T
Cleghorn Avaition Cessna T182T · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Naples Municipal Airport (APF) to Key West International Airport (EYW)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL05LA105
- 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 T182T
- 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
- N53538
- Operator
- Cleghorn Avaition
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Naples Municipal Airport (APF), Naples, FLTo Key West International Airport (EYW), Key West, FL
- 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
- 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 › Flight into known adverse weather, continued
- Weather condition › Thunderstorm
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 departed Naples Municipal Airport on a cross-country flight to Key West International Airport. The pilot was cleared to 5000 feet by Fort Myers Approach and instructed to contact Miami air traffic control center. The controller transmitted alerts for convective SIGMETs in the vicinity of the flight. The controller cleared the pilot to descend to 4,000 feet and issued the Key West altimeter setting. The pilot requested direct Key West and stated that he believed he could stay outside the warning areas. The controller approved the pilot's request direct Key West, but again told the pilot that if he needed to deviate for weather he could, however, the controller did not provide the pilot with available convective intensity level information. The controller made several attempts to reestablish contact with the pilot and was unsuccessful. According to recorded radar data, the airplane entered an area of heavy thunderstorms. Review of radar data revealed that the airplane disappeared from radar coverage approximately 18 miles south of Marco Island, Florida. During the search and rescue debris was located; it consisted of a passenger-briefing card, wheel assembly, seat back, and oxygen bottle, however, the main wreckage was not located. The FAA order 7110.65, "Air Traffic Control," paragraph 2-6-4, "Weather and Chaff Services," states: 2. Issue the level of echo intensity when that information is available.
Probable cause
The pilot continued flight into known thunderstorm activity that resulted in the loss of control and the subsequent collision with water. A factor was the controller's failure to provide the pilot with convective intensity.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL05LA105
- Event ID
- 20050629X00895
- Case number
- ATL05LA105
- 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: 2ce8eed9473250082a19338e50cb8443018bcb42a4dfa866244a40927f68b83a; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:00:45.420Z.