WPR24FA270 · Cessna 182K
Cessna 182K · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC while maneuvering
From Pullman-Moscow Regional Airport (KPUW) to Great Falls International Airport (GTF)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR24FA270
- 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
- 3 · 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 182K
- 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
- N2764Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pullman-Moscow Regional Airport (KPUW), Pullman, WATo Great Falls International Airport (GTF), Great Falls, MT
- Aircraft age
- About 57 years (built 1967)
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
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 non-instrument-rated pilot and two passengers departed on a cross-country flight toward mountainous terrain. During the first portion of the flight, visual meteorological conditions prevailed; however, the overcast cloud layer became lower as the airplane continued into rising terrain. Recorded flight data revealed that the pilot maneuvered the airplane through and between several mountain canyons and valleys as he continued in the general direction of the intended destination. The airplane crossed several ridges with as little as about 250 ft of terrain clearance and made a series of turns each time it approached high terrain immediately ahead. The airplane continued through rising terrain, then climbed through a narrow upslope mountain pass at the edge of the range. As the airplane approached the pass, it began a substantially steeper climb as the airspeed slowed, followed by a rapid descent and impact with the canyon wall.
Weather forecast and observation data indicated that the region where the flight was conducted was broadly covered by an overcast layer with localized areas of low clouds, fog and mist. Weather information that would have been available to the pilot before the flight forecast marginal to instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) with clouds obscuring the mountains along the route of flight.
Witnesses who were hiking in the area around the time of the accident and who were first to arrive on the scene confirmed that the pass near the accident site was windy and frequently enveloped in fog. It is likely that as the airplane flew into narrow valleys with increasing elevation, cloud ceilings were lower than the surrounding mountains, and the distance between the surface and the overcast layer became more constrained as the airplane continued along the route.
Given the low overcast and mountain obscuration, limited options to navigate or reverse course in narrow, constrained terrain, and known conditions in the upsloping mountain pass where the accident occurred, it is likely that the airplane entered an area of clouds and subsequently impacted terrain.
Probable cause
The non-instrument-rated pilot’s decision to continue a visual flight rules flight into a rugged mountain area in deteriorating weather conditions, which resulted in impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR24FA270
- Event ID
- 20240809194880
- Case number
- WPR24FA270
- 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: b251cf427b6fc77dcf98df2b9a350e4f3ff4b90437ea6c29a19ba876460d2d64; retrieved 2026-09-15T08:26:27.719Z.