Pilots for Christ International, or PCI, is a service organization dedicated in part to connecting volunteer pilots with people needing transportation for medical or other reasons. In February 2012, one of the members of the Wyoming chapter of the organization, a 47-year-old, 500-hour private pilot and owner of a 1961 Cessna 210, offered to fly to Salt Lake City to pick up a nurse, who had accompanied her grandmother there for medical treatment, and return her to her home.
The trip from the pilot’s base in Douglas, Wyoming, to Salt Lake City is a little more than 300 nm, or about two hours in the Cessna 210. He left at around 10 a.m. The weather over Wyoming was clear, but a patch of marginal VFR ceilings and visibilities hung over Salt Lake and the surrounding mountains. The forecast called for scattered to broken clouds at 10,000 feet, with an airmet warning of possible mountain obscuration. On the whole, the weather was mild and stable — no fronts and no major precipitation, with the freezing level around 7,000 feet and 9-knot west winds at that level.
