WPR15FA215 · Piper PA 22-160
Piper PA 22-160 · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) en route
From K6S9 · Stehekin, WA to Orcas Island Airport (KORS)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15FA215
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA 22-160
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-22
- 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
- N9712D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From K6S9 · Stehekin, WATo Orcas Island Airport (KORS), Eastsound, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 56 years (built 1959)
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The noninstrument-rated private pilot was making a cross-country flight over mountainous terrain. Radar data showed the airplane flying in a northwesterly direction and climbing to an altitude of about 10,500 ft mean sea level (msl). About 38 minutes into the flight, the airplane's altitude started to decrease as it continued in a northwesterly direction, and, 6 minutes later, its altitude was 7,500 ft msl. The last radar return occurred 1 minute later at an altitude of 6,000 ft msl. The wreckage was located at the 6,000-ft level of a mountain ridgeline in the vicinity of the final radar return. Photographs of the wreckage revealed that the damage to the airplane was consistent with controlled flight into the terrain. The wreckage was not recovered from the accident site, and no follow-up examination was accomplished.
Weather radar imagery indicated that rain showers moved into the area from the south-southeast as the airplane approached the accident site. These showers extended from about 19,000 ft msl down to ground level. Although no direct weather observations of the accident location were available, the airplane's descent as it approached the site is consistent with an attempt by the pilot to maintain visual meteorological conditions while operating amidst rain and clouds that likely obscured the terrain.
Probable cause
The noninstrument-rated pilot's continued visual flight into instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in controlled flight into mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15FA215
- Event ID
- 20150716X91546
- Case number
- WPR15FA215
- 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: 01114e36854fd825d0c686a4e1b1708672e3d83e791311a5c718199bce14644b; retrieved 2026-09-14T19:46:02.709Z.