CEN15FA189 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC en route
From Salem Airport (7M9) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15FA189
- 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 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
- N65463
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salem Airport (7M9), Salem, ARTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 37 years (built 1978)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot was conducting a nighttime cross-country flight in dark night visual meteorological conditions. He flew to another airport and dropped a passenger off; during the return to his destination, the airplane impacted terrain. The debris field at the accident site suggests that the pilot may have been attempting to divert to a local airport rather than continue to his planned destination. However, it could not be determined why the pilot was diverting.
A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine did not detect any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Local law enforcement personnel reported low, patchy fog near the accident site when they first began searching for the airplane. Further, given the elevation of the area of impact (1,025 ft) and of the nearest weather reporting station (463 ft), a meteorological study of the accident area found that clouds were likely present at 500 ft above ground level (agl) with a broken layer at 1,400 ft agl and an overcast layer at 2,700 ft agl. The moon was below the horizon at the time of the accident. There is no evidence that the pilot obtained a weather briefing before taking off. The pilot's logbook did not contain any recent log book entries, recent flight instruction, or nighttime flight. Although the pilot was able to successfully navigate to his initial destination, the circumstances of the accident are consistent with the noninstrument- rated pilot's controlled flight into terrain due to an inadvertent encounter with clouds while flying under visual flight rules.
The pilot's toxicology was positive for numerous substances, some of which were potentially impairing. It could not be determined the effect that The combination of psychiatric condition(s) indicated by the use of two antidepressants, chronic, high dose opioid use (hydrocodone), sedating antidepressant use (trazodone), and potentially ethanol use may have affected the pilot's performance. However, the extent that the effects contributed on the pilot's decision to conduct the flight on a dark night with the potential for marginal visual meteorological conditions without evidence of flight instruction or instrument rating and without obtaining a weather briefing could not be determined.
Probable cause
The noninstrument-rated pilot's controlled flight into terrain due to an inadvertent encounter with clouds in dark night conditions. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's decision to fly at night in marginal visual meteorological conditions without the proper training and without obtaining a weather briefing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15FA189
- Event ID
- 20150403X02544
- Case number
- CEN15FA189
- 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: 9da6639db99647d246ed942aa98548a241728bea30c1d77908f6d09c5b1ea746; retrieved 2026-09-14T17:34:27.087Z.