SEA87FA102
1987-05-26 · BATTLE MOUNTAIN, Nevada, United States · Fatal · 1 aircraft · Status: Completed
N20FU has since been reassigned. It is now registered to a different aircraft (XAG P100 PRO), which was not involved in this event.
Aircraft involved
Factual narrative
AFTER RECEIVING A WEATHER BRIEFING CALLING FOR MOUNTAINS OCCASIONALLY OBSCURED, OCCASIONAL MODERATE ICING FROM 18000 FT & BELOW, AND CEILINGS ACROSS NORTH & CENTRAL NEVADA, THE NONINSTRUMENT RATED PILOT FILED A VFR FLIGHT PLAN AND DEPARTED SALT LAKE CITY FOR RENO. EN ROUTE PILOT ENTERED IMC MOUNTAINOUS AREA & ATTEMPTED TO CLIMB TO 12000 FT, MINIMUM SAFE IFR ALTITUDE, AFTER COORDINATION WITH CENTER. DURING CLIMB AND WHILE IN IMC LOSS OF CONTROL OCCURRED. AIRCRAFT IMPACTED MOUNTAIN LEDGE IN NOSE LOW INVERTED ATTITUDE AT HIGH SPEED. PILOT HAD NEW AUTOPILOT AND LORAN INSTALLED DAY BEFORE DEPARTING ON ACCIDENT TRIP. DURING STOPOVER AT BATTLE MOUNTAIN FBO TRIED TO CONVINCE PILOT TO DELAY DUE TO POOR WEATHER. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_1987_SEA87FA102.txt.
Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb.
Full investigation docket on
data.ntsb.gov ↗.
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Related research
Matched on aircraft type or causal vocabulary (icing, stall, loss of control, imc). All research papers
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- NASA NTRS 2019 · Contractor Report (CR) An Evaluation of an Analytical Simulation of an Airplane with Tailplane Icing by Comparison to Flight Data
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- NASA NTRS 2019 · Technical Publication (TP) NASA/FAA Tailplane Icing Program: Flight Test Report
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