CEN21FA125 · Cessna 177RG
Aircraft Partners Cessna 177RG · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC en route
From Omar N Bradley Airport (MBY) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21FA125
- 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
Cessna 177RG
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N8080G
- Operator
- Aircraft Partners
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Omar N Bradley Airport (MBY), Moberly, MOTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 50 years (built 1971)
- 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
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The instrument-rated pilot completed one leg of a cross-country flight and landed with ¼ inch of structural icing on the airplane. After placing the airplane in a hanger to deice, the pilot elected to depart into similar weather conditions as when he arrived, which consisted of low cloud ceilings and forecast icing in the clouds. Before departing, the pilot told a witness he intended to fly north then west because “the weather was better to the north.” The witness attempted to dissuade the pilot from departing, but the pilot elected to takeoff anyway. No evidence was found that the pilot obtained a weather briefing or used his Foreflight account to check enroute weather conditions, but he did show a witness a weather map on his phone prior to departing.
The pilot departed and flew north-northwest about 70 miles before turning to the west-southwest until the data ended near the accident site. The airplane attained a maximum altitude of 1,900 ft mean sea level (msl) before it began a gradual descent until the data ended at 1,200 ft msl. Terrain along the route of flight varied between about 750 ft and 950 ft msl and the elevation at the accident site was about 785 ft msl. The pilot was not in contact with air traffic control during the flight.
The airplane impacted a wooded area about 1.8 miles west of the last recorded flight data point. The initial impact occurred with trees about 30 ft above the ground. The airplane was accounted for in its entirety at the accident site. Damage and dispersion of the wreckage prevented determination of the airplane’s attitude at the time of impact. The wreckage was examined, and no pre-impact anomalies were noted that would have prevented normal operation of the airplane.
Although there was no record of the pilot checking weather for the flight, his decision to fly north before turning west suggests that he likely checked weather from an undiscovered source. The airplane’s flight track is consistent with the pilot attempting to remain below the clouds, and it is likely that the airplane’s gradual descent corresponded to lowering cloud bases as the flight progressed.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to takeoff into instrument meteorological conditions consisting of low ceilings and icing and his failure to remain clear of terrain while attempting to remain below the clouds, which resulted in impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21FA125
- Event ID
- 20210209102616
- Case number
- CEN21FA125
- 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, cause areas. 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: 4255af01a6b94a77bc38e0e31a43140c66f710c2c44724815dc28ba793e8e44c; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:25:14.788Z.