BFO96FA039 · Cessna R172K
Traffik Cessna R172K · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From Burke Lakefront Airport (BKL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO96FA039
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna R172K
- 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
- N3107V
- Operator
- Traffik
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Burke Lakefront Airport (BKL), Cleveland, OHTo not recorded
- 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
- In flight collision with object
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC); Tower (marked)
- 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 › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
One pilot stated that she and the pilot of the accident airplane were scheduled to fly the early morning traffic watch route with traffic reporter passengers. She stated that she was the first pilot to take off, and she relayed pertinent weather information to the pilot of the accident airplane via VHF radio. The pilot reported that she informed the pilot of the accident airplane that weather conditions were marginal VMC, with deteriorating weather conditions in the southeast portion of the planned route. She reported that the pilots discussed cutting the morning traffic report short if conditions continued to get worse. Witnesses on the ground near the accident site stated that a very dense fog had developed, and the top of the tower was no longer visible from the ground. They heard a loud popping sound and saw the airplane fall to the ground. Postaccident investigation revealed that the airplane impacted the 300 foot cellular phone tower at approximately the 290-foot level.
Probable cause
the pilot's continued VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions at a low altitude with known obstacles in the area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO96FA039
- Event ID
- 20001208X05099
- Case number
- BFO96FA039
- 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: eec2ca0e5a753d6dd5137b7c4cfb791417fc3c7c649d294b93f054d400e03382; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:26:45.467Z.