DEN07FA045 · Piper PA-34-200T
Piper PA-34-200T · Accident: in flight encounter with weather while maneuvering
From Pueblo Memorial Airport (PUB) to Tyler Pounds Regional Airport (TYR)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN07FA045
- 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
Piper PA-34-200T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-34
- 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
- N8231D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pueblo Memorial Airport (PUB), Pueblo, COTo Tyler Pounds Regional Airport (TYR), Tyler, TX
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Flight into adverse weather, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Approximately 15 minutes after departure, the airplane encountered instrument meteorological conditions (IMC); and subsequently, the non-instrument rated private pilot lost control of the airplane and impacted snow-covered terrain. Prior to the cross-country flight, the pilot obtained three standard weather briefings, of which two were obtained on the previous day and one on the morning of the accident. The briefings included instrument flight rules (IFR) conditions along the planned route of flight. According to the briefing conversation and a statement from a friend, the pilot intended to land the airplane prior to his destination if the weather conditions were not visual flight rules (VFR). The pilot would then "wait it out" until the weather conditions improved. In addition, the pilot informed the weather briefer that "I have to be in Houston [Texas] by 7 o'clock" on the day of the accident. According to radar data, the airplane departed from the airport and was traveling on a southeasterly heading. For the first 15 minutes of the flight, the airplane maintained a level altitude and a consistent heading. For the last minute of the flight, the airplane entered a descent of 2,500 feet per minute, a climb of 3,000 fpm, and a 1,300 fpm descent, and the airplane's heading varied in several degrees. The airplane impacted the terrain in a right wing low, nose-down attitude. No anomalies were noted with the airframe and engines.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane after an inadvertent encounter with instrument meteorological conditions resulting in the subsequent impact with terrain. Contributing factors were the pilot's inadequate preflight planning, self-induced pressure to conduct the flight, and poor judgment.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN07FA045
- Event ID
- 20070111X00039
- Case number
- DEN07FA045
- 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: 9b46e97a4b8fd4e2fddfab30b51e7504d1c0fea45d0a27511d375da50c28573d; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:55:06.749Z.