CEN16FA073 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC en route
From Columbia Regional Airport (KCOU) to Sioux Gateway Airport / Brigadier General Bud Day Field (KSUX)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16FA073
- 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
- Unknown
Cessna 172N
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N5104D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Columbia Regional Airport (KCOU), Columbia, MOTo Sioux Gateway Airport / Brigadier General Bud Day Field (KSUX), Sioux City, IA
- Aircraft age
- About 37 years (built 1979)
- 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 · descent
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The noninstrument-rated pilot planned to conduct a cross-country flight. Before departure on the second leg of the flight, the pilot obtained a weather briefing, which noted areas of instrument flight rules (IFR) conditions along his route of flight, including his destination airport. During the briefing, the pilot indicated that his vehicle and work was at his destination. The briefer and pilot discussed flying visual flight rules (VFR) over the cloud layer and possible alternate destination airports. The briefer suggested maintaining VFR flight and making an intermediary stop to again check the weather. The pilot elected to fly direct to his destination. During the flight, the pilot flew above the cloud layer and received VFR flight-following from ATC. The controller advised him that his preferred destination airport was currently under IFR conditions, but another airport was reporting VFR. The pilot elected to continue to the alternate destination airport. The pilot notified the controller he did not have visual contact with the ground and continued his descent. Shortly thereafter, the controller lost radar and radio communication with the pilot. About the time of the accident, a person in the area reported the weather conditions as, "clouds on the ground," with low ceilings, and freezing fog and added that the visibility had changed from about 6 miles to less than ¼ mile in seconds. The airplane wreckage was located about 8 miles from the airport. Examination of the wreckage did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operations. A review of the pilot's logbook revealed he had a total of about 111 flight hours. The accident is consistent with controlled flight into terrain in instrument meteorological conditions as the pilot continued the descent without the ground in sight.
Probable cause
The noninstrument-rated pilot's improper decision to continue visual flight into instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in a collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16FA073
- Event ID
- 20160104X84134
- Case number
- CEN16FA073
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2016-01-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a4c80782b78f764cbd4952e871cd147f85b253e183eda4fcbda7c84d6fae753d; retrieved 2026-09-14T21:36:33.784Z.