WPR19FA263 · Cessna 182 H
Cessna 182 H · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC en route
From Lake Tahoe Airport (TVL) to Nampa Municipal Airport (MAN)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR19FA263
- 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 182 H
- 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
- N1891X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake Tahoe Airport (TVL), Lake Tahoe Airp, CATo Nampa Municipal Airport (MAN), Nampa, ID
- Aircraft age
- About 54 years (built 1965)
- 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 › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The noninstrument-rated private pilot departed on a cross-country flight over mountainous terrain. The airplane was in level cruise flight between 10,000 and 10,500 ft mean sea level (msl) when it entered a descending right turn and impacted steep terrain at an elevation just below an 8,000 ft ridgeline.
The nearest surface weather observations to the accident site indicated several layers of scattered, broken, and overcast clouds, with remarks advising of mountain obscuration in the area of the accident site. Weather satellite imagery depicted cloudy conditions over the area of the accident site with cloud tops over 20,000 ft msl. A model sounding for the accident site indicated near-saturated conditions below about 9,000 ft msl. Although there were no active advisories for instrument flight rules or mountain obscuration conditions, there was an active AIRMET for mountain obscuration conditions close to the accident site.
It is likely that the airplane inadvertently entered instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) and the pilot initiated a course reversal. During the turn, the pilot may have experienced spatial disorientation as the airplane did not maintain level flight and descended toward the steep terrain.
The wreckage was significantly fragmented, consistent with a high-energy impact. Examination of the airframe and engine revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. According to the pilot's logbook, he had about 3 hours of simulated instrument flight experience.
Probable cause
A loss of airplane control while maneuvering due to spatial disorientation after inadvertently entering instrument meteorological conditions (IMC). Contributing to the accident was the pilot's inexperience in IMC conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR19FA263
- Event ID
- 20190919X05306
- Case number
- WPR19FA263
- 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: 1bfaa61a8482315e757d9b57d39f3eb002adc21284ca78950995fb4df428d5ea; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:05:48.398Z.