BFO95FA050 · Cessna 172F
Andrews Aero Club Cessna 172F · Accident en route
From Hampton Roads Executive Airport (PVG) to Joint Base Andrews (ADW)
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO95FA050
- 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
- 1 · 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 172F
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N5238F
- Operator
- Andrews Aero Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hampton Roads Executive Airport (PVG), Portsmouth, VATo Joint Base Andrews (ADW), ANDREWS AFB, MD
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- En route · cruise
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Distance/speed, misjudged
- Pilot in command › Go-around, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE STUDENT PILOT WAS ON A SOLO CROSS-COUNTRY FLIGHT. ON THE FIRST LEG OF THE FLIGHT FROM ANDREWS AFB, MD, TO FARMVILLE, VA, SHE BECAME LOST AND LANDED AT CREWE AIRPORT, ABOUT 20 MILES FROM FARMVILLE. AFTER DETERMINING HER LOCATION, SHE CALLED HER FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR (CFI), AND THEY AGREED FOR HER TO CONTINUE THE FLIGHT. ON THE LAST LEG OF THE FLIGHT, FROM PORTSMOUTH, VA, BACK TO ANDREWS AFB, THE STUDENT BECAME LOST AGAIN. SHE CONTACTED RICHMOND ATCT AND REQUESTED FLIGHT FOLLOWING BACK TO ANDREWS AFB. SHE WAS ASKED TO SQUAWK A TRANSPONDER CODE; HOWEVER, SHE DID NOT RESPOND, AND RADIO COMMUNICATION WITH THE STUDENT WAS LOST. SHE ELECTED TO LAND AT A NEARBY AIRPORT. DURING THE LANDING, THE AIRPLANE TOUCHED DOWN AT THE DEPARTURE END OF THE RUNWAY. IT CONTINUED BEYOND THE END OF THE RUNWAY AND COLLIDED WITH A FENCE AND FENCE POST. THERE HAD BEEN SEVERAL BREAKS IN THE STUDENT'S FLIGHT TRAINING, DUE TO HER WORK SCHEDULE AND AN EXTENDED TDY. ACCORDING TO HER LOG BOOK, HER INSTRUCTOR HAD SIGNED HER OFF FOR A CROSS-COUNTRY FLIGHT ON 3/18/95, 25 DAYS BEFORE THE ACCIDENT. DURING THAT 25 DAYS, THE STUDENT FLEW 0.9 HOURS SOLO ON 3/18/95 AND RECEIVED 1.1 HOURS OF DUAL INSTRUCTION ON 4/29/95. AFTER THAT, SHE DID NOT FLY AGAIN UNTIL SHE DEPARTED ON THE SOLO CROSS-COUNTRY FLIGHT. SHE HAD 62.8 HOURS TOTAL FLIGHT TIME, INCLUDING 21.5 HOURS OF SOLO FLIGHT TIME.
Probable cause
The student pilot's misjudgment of distance/speed during the approach to land, and her failure to go around while there was still sufficient runway remaining. Factors related to the accident were: inadequate supervision by the flight instructor, the student's lack of recent flying experience, and the student pilot becaming lost or disoriented during the solo cross-country flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO95FA050
- Event ID
- 20001207X03413
- Case number
- BFO95FA050
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: 51252b3652e08d41b76896357b5253fd68a8e4a670e26284f743fc7e85256b29; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:46:53.300Z.