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Atlas / NTSB / DEN90FA068

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event DEN90FA068

1990-02-27 DENVER, Colorado, United States Airport · DEN Fatal 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Registry · N820FE

FAA Aircraft Registry record.

Make / Model

CESSNA 208B

Year of manufacture

1992

Engine

P&W PT6A SER (750 hp)

Seats / Engines

12 seats · 1 engine

Last airworthiness date

20241206

ADS-B equipped

Yes — Mode-S AB315D

Registrant of record

FEDERAL EXPRESS CORPORATION

Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

THE ACCUMULATION OF STRUCTURAL ICE AND SUBSEQUENT STALLING OF THE AIRCRAFT. THE ICING CONDITION WAS A RELATED FACTOR.

Factual narrative

THE CESSNA 208A WAS ON AN IFR FLT TO HAUL FREIGHT FROM ASPEN TO DENVER, COLORADO. MODERATE TO HEAVY ICING CONDITIONS WERE FORECAST FOR THE DENVER AREA. WHILE ON AN ILS RWY 36 APCH, THE ACFT ENCOUNTERED ICING CONDITIONS. SUBSEQUENTLY, IT ENTERED A STEEP DESCENT & CRASHED ABOUT 3 MI FROM THE APCH END OF THE RWY. NO PREIMPACT PART FAILURE OF THE ACFT WAS FOUND DURING THE INVESTIGATION. THE 1950 MST WX AT THE ARPT WAS IN PART: 800' SCATTERED, 1000' BROKEN, VIS 4 MI WITH FREZZING DRIZZLE & SNOW SHOWERS, TEMP 28 DEG, DEW POINT 25 DEG. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_1990_DEN90FA068.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Related research

What the literature says.

Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (icing, stall). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.

Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗