DFW08FA131 · Cessna 182 H
Winkmaggair Cessna 182 H · Accident: structural icing en route
From Sumers Airpark (GWS) to Boulder Municipal Airport (BDU)
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW08FA131
- 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
Cessna 182 H
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N8553S
- Operator
- Winkmaggair
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sumers Airpark (GWS), Glenwood Springs, COTo Boulder Municipal Airport (BDU), Boulder, 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 · 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane entered clouds and snow showers while en route on an instrument flight plan. Temperatures compounded with relative humidity, placed the airplane in conditions favorable for structural and induction system icing. During the flight, the engine lost partial power and the pilot could not maintain level flight. During the descent, the engine was observed to lose and regain power. The pilot continued to manuever the airplane until it collided with terrain. An examination of the airframe and engine failed to reveal any anomalies which would have precluded the safe operation of the airframe or production of engine power.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to induction icing. A contributing factor was the pilot's decision to continue flight in conditions favorable for structural and induction-system icing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW08FA131
- Event ID
- 20080513X00658
- Case number
- DFW08FA131
- 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: 0efe72ffb1f36da898933768e844ba4220e2bfda8cb25d2ee69b7473da3a5474; retrieved 2026-09-13T19:04:07.603Z.