WPR13FA041 · American AA-1
American AA-1 · Accident: structural icing during initial climb
From Morgan County Airport (42U) to Logan-Cache Airport (LGU)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR13FA041
- 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
American AA-1
- Aircraft type
- American AA-1
- 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
- N5642L
- Operator
- Darren Tidwell
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Morgan County Airport (42U), Morgan, UTTo Logan-Cache Airport (LGU), Logan, UT
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness reported that the airplane took off just before sunrise and that the engine sounded normal. During climbout, the airplane impacted rising terrain about 3 miles from the airport and about 776 feet above field elevation. A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. A review of the recorded meteorological data showed that the weather conditions were conducive to frost formation. Further, a witness at the airport reported observing frost on the surfaces of parked airplanes on the day of the accident. Therefore, it is likely that the airplane had frost on its surfaces before takeoff and that the pilot failed to adequately clear the frost off the airplane during the preflight inspection, which increased drag and reduced the production of lift; therefore, the airplane was unable to gain sufficient altitude to clear the rising terrain.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight inspection, which resulted in frost remaining on the airplane's surfaces and led to its inability to produce enough lift to clear rising terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR13FA041
- Event ID
- 20121115X23258
- Case number
- WPR13FA041
- 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: a1a2dbd2e25213dc0448d9a2622a7c397c0ce61521c4f2c8f5ec6f8d7fb8ed48; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:48:08.615Z.