The Cessna 182 departed Lake Tahoe Airport (KTVL) in California, destined for Nampa Municipal Airport (KMAN) in Idaho.
The pilot established contact with air traffic control northeast of the Carson Airport (KCXP) in Nevada and requested visual flight rules (VFR) flight following to KMAN. Communication was established and the airplane continued to fly towards its destination.
While the airplane was flying over mountainous terrain north of Reno, Nevada, the controller observed the airplane enter a right turn and reverse course. The controller asked the pilot if he was returning to the Reno/Tahoe International Airport (KRNO), to which there was no response. The controller attempted to re-establish radio communication with the airplane, but to no avail.
Automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) tracking data showed the plane flying northeast about 8,000 feet until it entered a climb southeast of Reno. It leveled off about 10,000 feet msl and turned onto a north-northwesterly heading. The airplane continued flying between 10,000 and 10,500 feet over mountains with terrain elevations between about 7,500 to 8,000 feet when it entered a descending right turn before the track ended at an altitude of 8,100 feet.
An alert notice (ALNOT) for the airplane was established about 20 minutes after the loss of radar contact. Search and rescue aerial efforts were hampered due to limited visibility surrounding the accident site coordinates.
Ground search efforts located the wreckage on steep mountainous terrain about four hours later near the last radar coordinates. The aircraft was destroyed and the pilot and a passenger were killed in the crash.
No record was located indicating the pilot received an official weather briefing.
Surface observations at nearby airports indicated unlimited visibility and several layers of scattered, broken, and overcast clouds. The observation from Reno/Tahoe International Airport, about 20 miles southwest of the accident site, indicated that the mountain tops were obscured to the southwest through northwest more than 10 miles away. Shortly after the accident occurred, the observation from KRNO also remarked that the mountain tops to the northeast more than 10 miles away were obscured.
The pilot did not hold an instrument rating.
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.
This September 2019 accident report is provided by the National Transportation Safety Board. Published as an educational tool, it is intended to help pilots learn from the misfortunes of others.
“Probable cause: pilot attempted to continue flight into IMC without being qualified on instruments and lost control.” Maybe in different words, but a recurring scenario, which very often bites the pilot and any unsuspecting passengers. Loss of situational awareness leading to loss of control in IMC is something that is hard to imagine until it’s been experienced, and too often the first experience kills. Eons ago when I was instructing, I tried to get my students into IMC so that they could experience first hand and safely how important it was to focus on the instruments—just the simulated instrument work wearing a hood is insufficient—but how do we get that message across to the thousands of VFR-only pilots out there?
For that matter, how do we get the same message to the many IR pilots who are no longer qualified because their instrument skills have atrophied? I have many actual IMC hours hand flying (no autopilot), and I have been a pretty skilled instrument pilot, but it’s been literally years since I was last in IMC and current. A recent instrument refresher flight with my instructor showed me how much my instrument skills have atrophied—didn’t get lost, didn’t lose control, but oh my, how incredibly rough I was! Am I a safe instrument pilot? Nope. Would I survive an inadvertent IMC encounter? Maybe. Can I get those skills back again? Sure, but it’ll take some work.
Meanwhile, regardless of what is printed on my certificate, I’m a VFR-only pilot, and that means no IMC and no marginal VFR flying. Period.
Hangar, not hanger. I sit corrected, thank you.
/J
You are honest with yourself. I bacame honest years ago when I almost lost control in a snowstorm trying to locate the airport I was to land at. I decided I was going to be a fair weather pilot from now on.
The entire story is suspect. For the past three months there has been insidious smoke in the skys wafting into Nevada from California wildfires. Taking off from S. Tahoe airport and getting over the East Sierra rim and into the Carson valley would have been a feat for the 182 already, but once over Carson they would make contact with NORCAL TRACON. If the aircraft requested VFR, ATC should have warned them about smoky condition at that point and they had plenty of opportunity to simply return to S. Tahoe. Flying straight North of Reno there are no mountains over 6k feet continue to fly North and not try to cross back into CA. But smoke from the Dixie fire (nearly a million acres burned) would have choked the area. If they (or anyone) tried to challenge that smoke they pretty much used the plane to commit suicide.
This accident was in September 2019. Dixie Fire two years after the accident.
Same narrative the investigators only have to change the names.
Yet another report of fatalities owing to pilot incompetence. I know GA pilots who take their airplane hobby extremely seriously; who carefully study weather conditions and terrain features before heading to the hanger. Those who think operating a flying machine is like jumping into their pickup truck for a joy ride wind up in early graves — or at least the parts of them that can be identified and collected into a blacl bad. I mourn for their friends and families. Again, there are old pilots and too-casual pilots, but no old too-casual pilots. RIP, gents. Regards/J
You use a “hanger” to hang up your clothes in the closet. You use a “hangar” to store an aircraft.
I agree with you wholeheartedly, some folks are way too casual about doing a pre-flight inspection, getting a weather briefing, complying with annual inspection and flight review regs, etc. Sooner or later they get eaten by the bear and general aviation gets another black mark in the eyes of the general public and the civic leaders who look at that airport property and see a million square foot warehouse or a couple hundred townhouses in its place.
Bob
“Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s inexperience in IMC conditions.”
IMC- Instrument Meteorological Conditions. Adding the word Conditions after IMC is redundant and an example of poor journalistic qualities.
Well, that’s like MLB baseball game. Redundance school of redundancy.
Reads like he turned into the terrain instead of away.
Preliminary radar data showed the airplane on a southerly track after takeoff followed by a left turn towards the northeast. The airplane continued in that general direction until about Interstate 80 and then continued on a north-northwest heading. The track paralleled a mountain ridgeline until it made a right 180-degree turn and ended.
It is up on Kathryns Report.