DEN05FA125 · Cessna 177B
Cessna 177B · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Rawlins Municipal Airport/Harvey Field (RWL) to 2V5 · Wray, CO
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN05FA125
- 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
- 2 · 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 177B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N35166
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rawlins Municipal Airport/Harvey Field (RWL), Rawlins, WYTo 2V5 · Wray, CO
- 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 · climb to 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 collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Airport personnel said the airplane arrived approximately 1900, was refueled, and departed approximately 1926. When the flight plan was not closed, an ALNOT was issued. The wreckage was found the next morning on a direct path to its destination. The airplane had struck trees in mountainous terrain at the 10,500-foot level. According to a deputy sheriff, low clouds and light rain obscured the mountain range and at the time of the accident, it was getting dark. Data downloaded from a hand-held GPS revealed the airplane took off and turned east. It climbed to an altitude of 10,400 feet, then descended and flew at altitudes between 9,800 feet and 10,000 feet. Two minutes before impact, the airplane began climbing. When the ground track was overlaid on a 3-dimensional map, the airplane's altitude began to increase as it approached rising terrain. A toxicological screen was also performed by FAA's Civil Aeromedical Institute (CAMI). In addition to detecting metoprolol in blood and liver, quinine was detected in the liver. Also, 0.044 (ug/mL, ug/g) and 2.618 (ug/mL, ug/g) paroxetine was detected in blood and liver, respectively. According to Kaiser Permanente's Drug Encyclopedia, the medication is "a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) used to treat depression, panic attacks, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), social anxiety disorder (social phobia), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and generalized anxiety disorders (GAD). SSRI's work by helping to restore the balance of certain natural substances in the brain (neurotransmitters).
Probable cause
the pilot's improper in-flight planning/decision, in that he failed to maintain a steady state climb rate to a safe altitude and continued flight towards visible weather that obstructed his chosen route of flight, and his failure to maintain terrain clearance. Contributing factors were the clouds and rain that obscured the mountain tops, dusk light conditions, and mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN05FA125
- Event ID
- 20050818X01273
- Case number
- DEN05FA125
- 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 2005-08-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 8d91d5bfd9bb76d3983baa9e7019211d6cd3e071f795e9e173047970388abbcb; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:56:19.971Z.