WPR14FA286 · Cessna 182 F
Cessna 182 F · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC during initial climb
From Fall City Airport (1WA6) to Harvey Field (S43)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14FA286
- 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
- 0
- 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 182 F
- 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
- N5816B
- Operator
- John R. Ciliberti · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fall City Airport (1WA6), Fall City, WATo Harvey Field (S43), Snohomish, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 58 years (built 1956)
- 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
- VFR encounter with IMC
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot intended to reposition the airplane for maintenance to an airport about 23 nautical miles north-northwest of the departure airport. Low ceilings and fog were predominant in the area, with treetops on the adjacent golf course to the west obscured by fog. At the time of departure, the ceiling at the airport was most likely low, but the pilot elected to depart. Recovered GPS data revealed that, immediately after taking off to the west, the pilot turned to the north toward rising terrain. The pilot then, most likely after encountering a low ceiling, started a left turn, during which the airplane ascended to an altitude of about 515 ft. About 16 seconds after starting the left turn, the airplane had descended to an altitude of about 217 feet and was heading south. The airplane then began to climb, and, 10 seconds later, the airplane had reached an altitude of 577 ft; it then began to descend and reached an altitude of 404 ft 7 seconds later, still on a southerly heading. The descent continued, and, 3 seconds later, the last recorded data point revealed that the airplane was at an altitude of 135 ft and a groundspeed of 124 knots on a southwesterly heading. The airplane subsequently impacted a tree on the golf course, traveled about 200 feet on a westerly heading before impacting a second tree, and came to rest about 60 feet west of the second tree in the middle of a fairway. Multiple witnesses on the golf course reported that the airplane was flying low on a southerly heading and that they heard the engine surge just before impact. All airplane components necessary for flight were accounted for at the accident site. Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot likely took off and then realized that the ceiling was too low and the fog too dense for safe flight and attempted to return to the airport. The engine surge likely occurred as the pilot saw the tree just before impact.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to depart in low-ceiling conditions and his continued visual flight rules flight into instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in controlled flight into terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14FA286
- Event ID
- 20140708X32543
- Case number
- WPR14FA286
- 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: 821963f1b6302cd3c2ca38e0f550eb6e843eee893c39e5eadf542467354f0717; retrieved 2026-09-14T17:21:21.656Z.