DEN08FA141 · Cessna 182T
Anson Air Cessna 182T · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC en route
From Steamboat Springs Bob Adams Field (SBS) to Brenham Municipal Airport (11R)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN08FA141
- 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
- 4 · 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 182T
- 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
- N487TC
- Operator
- Anson Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Steamboat Springs Bob Adams Field (SBS), Steamboat Springs, COTo Brenham Municipal Airport (11R), Brenham, 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
- 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
- VFR encounter with 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The instrument-rated pilot was traveling cross-country with three passengers after a family vacation. The airplane was instrument-flight-rules equipped and the pilot was familiar with the airplane. There was no evidence the pilot obtained a weather briefing prior to departure and he did not file a flight plan. An analysis conducted by an NTSB meteorology specialist determined that, at the time of departure, weather was marginal visual meteorological conditions with an overcast layer above and scattered clouds at and below the flown flight level. Weather near the accident site deteriorated rapidly after departure and the pilot likely encountered a level 2 thunderstorm, lost control of the airplane and impacted terrain, destroying the airplane. Postaccident inspection of the airplane did not disclose evidence of any preimpact anomaly of the engine or airplane systems.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control after inadvertantly encountering instrument meteorological conditions. Contributing to the accident were the pilot's failure to obtain a weather brief and the severe weather conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN08FA141
- Event ID
- 20080825X01302
- Case number
- DEN08FA141
- 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: d27c535ef0bdc84e7148d1d5ab2c5552200a1e87e8f352afc41f9ea71a296f50; retrieved 2026-09-13T19:23:02.408Z.