DEN06LA004 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Double Eagle II Airport (AEG) to Benson Municipal Airport/Paul Kerchum Field (E95)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN06LA004
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-28-140
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N55910
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Double Eagle II Airport (AEG), Albuquerque, NMTo Benson Municipal Airport/Paul Kerchum Field (E95), Benson, AZ
- 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
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, attempted
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot obtained a weather briefing, filed a VFR flight plan, and took off at 1108. When he failed to close his flight plan, an Alert Notice (ALNOT) was issued. Recorded radar data captured a VFR target proceeding south from the airport until it turned to a southwest heading and initiated a climb to 7,500 feet. Radar contact was lost at 1208. The nearest weather reporting station, located 34 n.m. east-northeast of the accident site and at an elevation of 4,853 feet msl, reported a ceiling of 2,500 feet agl (above ground level), or 7,353 msl. A military helicopter crew also filed a pilot report (PIREP), reporting mountain top obscuration in the area. The wreckage was found 2 days later at an elevation of 8,100 feet msl near the point where radar contact was lost.
Probable cause
the pilot's attempt to fly VFR into instrument meteorological conditions, and his failure to maintain terrain clearance. Contributing factors were the reported low ceiling and mountain obscuration, resulting in the pilot being unable to maintain a visual lookout.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN06LA004
- Event ID
- 20051017X01668
- Case number
- DEN06LA004
- 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: 76b0ec0298d7419ea26bb25bbd63602146f10d45e6efd5240cd065a217fdafdc; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:50:41.230Z.