ERA22FA314 · Cessna 210C
Cessna 210C · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC during initial climb
From an unrecorded airport to Warsaw Municipal Airport (ASW)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22FA314
- 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 210C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 210
- 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
- N3659Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Warsaw Municipal Airport (ASW), Warsaw, IN
- Aircraft age
- About 59 years (built 1963)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The accident occurred shortly after the non-instrument rated pilot and passenger departed the airport on a visual flight rules flight in instrument meteorological conditions. Two pilots at the airport reported that the weather was poor at the time of the takeoff, with low ceilings and rain prevailing. After the departure, a local resident who lived about 1.5 miles south of the airport heard the airplane over his property for about 30 seconds, and the engine was “revving up” before the airplane crashed in the woods near his house. The airplane impacted trees and terrain at a steep, nose-low descent angle. The fragmentation of the wreckage and damage to the terrain at the accident site were indicative of a high-speed impact. Examination of the wreckage did not reveal evidence of a preexisting mechanical failure or anomaly that would have precluded normal operation of the airframe or engine. There was no evidence that the pilot obtained a weather briefing prior to the flight. The family of the pilot reported that the purpose of the flight was to attend an event in another state, that he had missed a similar previous event, and that did not want to miss this one. The pilot most likely entered instrument meteorological conditions immediately after takeoff, experienced spatial disorientation, and lost control of the airplane. The pressure that the pilot placed upon himself to attend the event was likely a factor in the accident.
Probable cause
The non-instrument rated pilot’s decision to commence the flight in instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in spatial disorientation and a subsequent loss of airplane control. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s self-induced pressure to initiate the flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22FA314
- Event ID
- 20220716105484
- Case number
- ERA22FA314
- 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: 5801ef76e855e2b00171dadd323119b730d54563d816c7592b353fc0332a0c64; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:47:15.076Z.