CEN18FA054 · Piper PA28 180
Piper PA28 180 · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC en route
From Gardner Municipal Airport (K34) to M. Graham Clark Downtown Airport (KPLK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18FA054
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA28 180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N6433J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gardner Municipal Airport (K34), Gardner, KSTo M. Graham Clark Downtown Airport (KPLK), Branson, MO
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The noninstrument-rated private pilot and the passenger, who held a student pilot certificate, departed on a night cross-country flight. The pilot was not in communication with air traffic control during the accident flight; however, a review of radar information revealed a flight track that correlated with the accident flight. The airplane approached it's destination from the north/northwest, making several turns, including circles, along its route of flight, before the target disappeared from radar near the accident location.
Witnesses near the accident site stated that the visibility was poor and that it was foggy at the time of the accident. A review of weather conditions revealed instrument meteorological conditions at the accident site, and at the destination airport. A further review of weather conditions for the time the flight originated from its departure airport, and an hour before departure time, revealed similar instrument weather conditions near the accident site and destination airport. There was no record that the pilot received a preflight weather briefing for the planned flight.
Although examination of the airplane was limited by impact damage, no pre-impact abnormalities were noted with the airframe or engine.
The accident is consistent with the noninstrument-rated pilot's flight into known instrument meteorological conditions and subsequent collision with terrain.
Probable cause
The noninstrument-rated pilot's inadequate pre-flight planning and in-flight decision-making, which resulted in flight into known instrument meteorological conditions and the subsequent collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18FA054
- Event ID
- 20171217X21740
- Case number
- CEN18FA054
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2017-12-18.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 00fa8cc263e13ae4c7d8b77b27d7df44f37b2c44083d6631e83ff3c8e296aabf; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:27:43.830Z.