CHI08FAMS2 · Piper Aircraft Inc PA-28-161
Piper Aircraft Inc PA-28-161 · Accident: structural icing en route
From Reykjavík Domestic Airport (BIRK) to Wick John O'Groats Airport (EGPC)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI08FAMS2
- 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
- Not recorded
Piper Aircraft Inc PA-28-161
- 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
- N60842
- Operator
- Gregory Frey
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Reykjavík Domestic Airport (BIRK), ReykjavikTo Wick John O'Groats Airport (EGPC), Wick
- 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- Structural icing
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
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 was asked by a ferry company representative to delay his flight until the icing weather had cleared from the route of flight. The pilot was handed a weather briefing by a dispatcher during the pilot’s preflight weather briefing. The briefing included the significant low level weather chart indicating icing from 7,000 above mean sea level. The pilot reportedly elected to depart on the day of the accident flight. During the ferry flight over the Atlantic Ocean, the pilot relayed through other aircraft to air traffic control that he encountered icing and a loss of engine power. The pilot descended from his cruise flight level of 11,000 feet above mean sea level. An emergency locater transmitter signal associated with the airplane was detected by a satellite in the area. Search and rescue operations did not locate the airplane or pilot.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to fly into an area of forecast weather suitable for structural icing. Contributing to the accident was the effect of the structural icing encountered.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI08FAMS2
- Event ID
- 20080227X00238
- Case number
- CHI08FAMS2
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 25a8b476aa9cdc405478001eede260c0db7f706aef5381866471c2f140d23781; retrieved 2026-09-13T18:57:13.605Z.