CEN13FA214 · Cessna 152
Superior Flying Services Cessna 152 · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC en route
From Richard I Bong Memorial Airport (SUW) to Moorhead Municipal Airport (JKJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13FA214
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N5367B
- Operator
- Superior Flying Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Richard I Bong Memorial Airport (SUW), Superior, WITo Moorhead Municipal Airport (JKJ), Moorhead, MN
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Experience/knowledge
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The noninstrument-rated private pilot departed on a personal flight without a flight plan. According to a designated pilot examiner, the pilot obtained weather information on a computer before the flight. Weather reports indicated that instrument meteorological conditions prevailed before and during the flight at the destination airport. According to the pilot's mother, she talked to him during the flight, told him that fog existed in the area, and asked him to land in another area; the pilot continued the flight without diverting. Search and rescue operations were conducted about 4 hours later when the pilot's mother contacted local authorities due to concern that he had not arrived. The airplane wreckage was located about 15 miles east of the destination airport and exhibited a high-speed, right-wing-low impact with terrain, indicative of a loss of control. Examination of the airplane revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The noninstrument-rated pilot’s improper decision to conduct a flight into known instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in a loss of control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13FA214
- Event ID
- 20130401X00543
- Case number
- CEN13FA214
- 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: cf5ca8fd306739e1330c2ecc29b7019838824ce9e1abcb4391281d23d0e66c3f; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:55:03.722Z.