CEN14FA051 · Cessna T310R
Cessna T310R · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC en route
From Giddings-Lee County Airport (KGYB) to Sonora Municipal Airport (KSOA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14FA051
- 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
- 2 · 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 T310R
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 310
- 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
- N38LH
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Giddings-Lee County Airport (KGYB), Giddings, TXTo Sonora Municipal Airport (KSOA), Sonora, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 33 years (built 1980)
- 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
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- 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 cross-country flight without obtaining a weather briefing from a flight service station or the Direct User Access Terminal System, and he did not communicate with air traffic control during the flight. Existing weather advisories for instrument flight rules conditions along the intended route of flight had been issued. Radar data was not available for the flight due to antenna site locations, so the airplane's flight path and flight altitudes could not be determined. Witnesses near the accident site reported overcast skies, fog, drizzle, and windy weather conditions. They also reported hearing sounds consistent with an airplane circling and then sounds consistent with a rapid descent followed by the sound of an impact. Postaccident examination revealed damage and fragmentation to the airplane consistent with a nose-low attitude and high velocity at the time of impact. Weather observations and satellite imagery showed that a layer of overcast clouds was present over the accident site with a base at about 800 feet above ground level (about 2,600 feet mean sea level) and tops at about 9,500 feet mean sea level. It is likely that the pilot encountered instrument meteorological conditions and subsequently lost control of the airplane.
Probable cause
The noninstrument-rated private pilot's decision to continue a visual flight rules flight into instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in the loss of airplane control. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s failure to obtain a weather briefing before departure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14FA051
- Event ID
- 20131112X30325
- Case number
- CEN14FA051
- 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: 660cc8a971d875c2a3f56cd6b5050c9544144fe5cac84cbb5ae452c3a6f72b15; retrieved 2026-09-14T16:07:12.019Z.