WPR18FA063 · Cessna 172M M
Cessna 172M M · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From Ogden Hinckley Airport (OGD) to Ogden Hinckley Airport (OGD)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR18FA063
- 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
Cessna 172M M
- 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
- N4395R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ogden Hinckley Airport (OGD), Ogden, UTTo Ogden Hinckley Airport (OGD), Ogden, UT
- Aircraft age
- About 43 years (built 1974)
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- 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 › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot and private pilot-rated passenger departed on a local flight in day visual meteorological conditions and climbed to a peak altitude about 2,370 ft above ground level. The airplane then entered a gradual, wings-level descent during which it began to fly over a large lake. The airplane impacted the water and subsequently sank.
The airplane was mostly intact and exhibited no evidence of mechanical failures or anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Given the condition of the airplane, flight track, altitude data, and the proximity to land, it is likely that the pilot intentionally descended the airplane to low altitude over the lake. It is also likely that the lake exhibited a glassy surface due to low wind conditions about the time of the accident, which would have reduced depth perception and made it difficult for the pilot to judge the airplane's height above the water. Additionally, toxicology of the pilot revealed the presence of three different impairing medications. It is likely that he was experiencing combined adverse effects of these three central nervous system depressants, which contributed to his failure to maintain clearance from the water while performing low-altitude flight.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from the water while flying over a lake with glassy surface conditions. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's use of three impairing medications.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR18FA063
- Event ID
- 20180104X85338
- Case number
- WPR18FA063
- 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: fa456d0daa292bfd57507ea1a1c2a17f2659608d7abf8e7fb9e9fabc4a8753cd; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:29:09.003Z.