DEN06FA065 · Cessna T310R
Cessna T310R · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Billings Logan International Airport (BIL) to Cedar City Regional Airport (CDC)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN06FA065
- 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 T310R
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 310
- 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
- N289WB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Billings Logan International Airport (BIL), Billings, MTTo Cedar City Regional Airport (CDC), Cedar City, UT
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Induction air ducting › Ice
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Radar data depicted the airplane reverse course from a southerly track to a northerly track. The pilot reported to air route traffic control center (ARTCC) that he had just lost manifold pressure in the left engine and that he needed to go lower. The controller cleared the pilot to descend from 16,000 feet mean sea level (msl) to 14,000 feet msl. The center controller asked the pilot if he had reversed course due to his engine problem and the pilot acknowledged in the affirmative. The controller assigned the pilot another frequency and the pilot acknowledged the frequency change. No further transmissions were made from the pilot on either frequency and radar contact was lost at an encoded altitude of 11,400 feet msl. The wreckage was located in mountainous, down sloping, snow covered, forested terrain. The airplane was destroyed. An examination of the airframe, engines, and airplane systems revealed no anomalies. Radar echoes and satellite data indicated that the accident airplane most likely entered clouds approximately 1010. Based upon the current icing potential algorithm, there was a high likelihood of icing and supercooled large water droplets at 14,000 to 16,000 feet msl in the accident area. Based on area forecasts, PIREPS, and weather advisories, the accident airplane most likely encountered moderate to severe turbulence and moderate to severe mixed icing during the final few minutes before the accident.
Probable cause
the pilot's loss of aircraft control due to the loss of engine power due to induction icing. Contributing factors include the in-flight encounter with structural icing, the severe turbulence, and the pilot's increased workload.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN06FA065
- Event ID
- 20060428X00490
- Case number
- DEN06FA065
- 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: bf46391a1cbc9cad6c8444f2bb09ee2255fced12cd79f735c8befac25a4c0dcb; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:24:31.655Z.