FTW96FA075 · Aero Commander 112
Aero Commander 112 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From T98 · San Marcos, TX to Cavern City Air Terminal (CNM)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96FA075
- 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
- 2 · 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
Aero Commander 112
- Aircraft type
- Aero Commander 112
- 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
- N1152J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From T98 · San Marcos, TXTo Cavern City Air Terminal (CNM)
- 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
- Approach · IFR missed approach
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The instrument rated private pilot was on an IFR flight from San Marcos, Texas, to Carlsbad, New Mexico. During an ILS RWY 3 approach to the Cavern City Air Terminal at Carlsbad, the pilot executed a missed approach. The pilot reported to ATC that his glide slope failed. While maneuvering in the clouds to reattempt an approach at Carlsbad, the pilot lost control of the airplane and impacted the terrain. A pilot reported the weather at Carlsbad was VFR below 1,100 feet with the tops of the clouds from 7200 to 7500 feet. The pilot was instructed to maintain 7,000 feet. The pilot made three 'mayday' calls prior to stating that, 'five two Juliet totally disoriented.' According to the pilot's log books he had accumulated 44 hours of instrument flight time of which 38.4 hours were logged as actual instrument weather time since July 20, 1993. The pilot's instrument flight instructor reported that whenever the pilot filed an IFR flight plan, he would log the flight as actual instrument weather time. Examination of the airplane and engine did not disclose any pre-mishap discrepancies. Due to the extent of damage, flight control continuity could not be established.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control due to spatial disorientation. Factors were the pilot's lack of total actual instrument weather time and the clouds.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96FA075
- Event ID
- 20001207X04998
- Case number
- FTW96FA075
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1995-12-24.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 6139f1d8280ae16b1504f2b5750611623b41ea7fa6c4a9f482560ab8757be019; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:28:52.752Z.