WPR09FA282 · Cessna 182M
Cessna 182M · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) en route
From Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (KBOI) to Unknown
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09FA282
- 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 182M
- 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
- N70946
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (KBOI), Boise Air Termi, IDTo Unknown
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The single engine airplane impacted a vertical rock cliff face in mountainous terrain about 500 feet below a mountain ridge line. Global Positioning System (GPS) data was recovered from a portable GPS unit that was located with the airplane wreckage. The GPS data track originated in the vicinity of the departure airport, and proceeded at 8,350 feet mean sea level (msl) northeast for 57 miles, and abruptly ends in the vicinity of the accident site. During the last 2 minutes of the flight, the track increased in altitude from 8,350 feet to 8,891 feet msl. The height of the mountain ridge line directly ahead of the airplanes' flight path was between 9,100 feet and 9,580 feet msl. The end of the GPS track did not exhibit any deviations that could be interpreted as an evasive maneuver. The cloud coverage in the vicinity of the accident location was between scattered and broken, with bases between 8,000 and 9,000 feet msl, cloud tops were about 15,000 feet msl, with visibility greater than 3 miles in cloud-free areas.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain terrain clearance during cruise flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09FA282
- Event ID
- 20090609X15233
- Case number
- WPR09FA282
- 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. 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: 5d803f20cecfe4b857f40b8b4bd457d767be56f95c158a94e9295d4f18ff4bd9; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:11:09.692Z.