CEN17LA076 · Cessna 182T T
Cessna 182T T · Accident: structural icing en route
From Marquette Sawyer Regional Airport (SAW) to Falls International Airport (INL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA076
- 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
- 0 · 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 182T T
- 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
- C-GTBI
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Marquette Sawyer Regional Airport (SAW), Marquette, MITo Falls International Airport (INL), International Falls, MN
- Aircraft age
- About 12 years (built 2005)
- 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
- Structural icing
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that, during a cross-country flight, the airplane encountered ice that began to accumulate on the wing and landing gear. He then attempted to divert to another airport. Subsequently, ice accumulated rapidly on the windshield and obscured the pilot's vision. The pilot maneuvered the airplane near the diversion airport for about 45 minutes; however, the weather deteriorated, so the pilot diverted to another airport. The pilot stated that, while attempting to land while looking out the side window, the airplane stalled about 30 ft above the ground, which resulted in a hard landing.
A review of weather information for the area where the reported icing encounter occurred revealed no probability of icing at the reported time and altitude of the encounter and only about a 10% chance of trace icing during the hour following the encounter. Based on the available information, the airplane likely encountered unforecast icing during the flight, which resulted in structural icing that obscured the pilot's vision and increased the airplane's stall speed. When the pilot attempted to land, the airplane stalled at a higher-than-expected speed, which resulted in a hard landing.
Probable cause
The airplane’s encounter with unforecast icing conditions, which led to structural icing that obscured the pilot’s vision, an aerodynamic stall, and a subsequent hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA076
- Event ID
- 20170113X00618
- Case number
- CEN17LA076
- 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, coordinates. 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: 4eb951365df78a37382df94279fad9b75ac6b17e20abf40df0f592dbfae426c0; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:56:55.827Z.