CEN25LA211 · Cessna U206 G
Cessna U206 G · Accident: loss of visual reference on approach
From New Richmond Regional Airport (RNH) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN25LA211
- 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
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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 U206 G
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N932DB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From New Richmond Regional Airport (RNH), New Richmond, WITo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 46 years (built 1979)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Loss of visual reference
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed in the float-equipped airplane to perform three water and three land landings for currency purposes. During the approach to the glassy surface of the rural freshwater lake, the floats impacted the lake. The pilot reported that a “hard impact” occurred, and the float attachment struts were damaged. During the impact, the pilot believed the airplane was between 20 to 25 ft above the glassy surface of the lake. The airplane came to rest upright, and the pilot was able to egress from the cockpit onto a float. The pilot was then picked up by an individual in a nearby boat. Shortly after, the airplane partially sank, and it came to rest inverted in the lake. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage. The pilot reported there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airframe or the engine that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot further reported that the accident could have been prevented by remembering that it is “almost impossible to judge height above glassy water.” The FAA Aeronautical Information Manual (AIM) discusses various illusions leading to landing errors. The FAA AIM defines the featureless terrain illusion as, “an absence of ground features, as when landing over water, darkened areas, and terrain made featureless by snow, can create the illusion that the aircraft is at a higher altitude than it actually is.”
Probable cause
The pilot experiencing the featureless terrain illusion during the approach which gave the perception that the airplane was at a higher altitude over the glassy water surface than it was, resulting in the airplane impacting the water.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN25LA211
- Event ID
- 20250618200352
- Case number
- CEN25LA211
- 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, 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: 3dda9baaaa93b02038c176bac555b4f0a351f84cbabe8be84d3f818aa625e62a; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:58:58.964Z.