NYC96FA061 · Cessna P206A
Cessna P206A · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From Sky Manor Airport (N40) to Braden Airpark (N43)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC96FA061
- 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 P206A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N4655F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sky Manor Airport (N40), PITTSTOWN, NJTo Braden Airpark (N43), Easton, PA
- 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
- Tower
- 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
- Faa(organization) › Insufficient standards/requirements
- Object › Tower
- Other govt organization › Insufficient standards/requirements
- Pilot in command › Proper altitude, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot/owner had flown a round-trip between his base airport and another airport during the day. He flew another round-trip that evening. During the return leg, the airplane struck the top of an unlighted 928 feet mean sea level (MSL) tower 2 miles from the destination airport. The destination airport field elevation is 399 feet MSL. The recommended pattern altitude for the airport was 1,400 feet MSL. The tower lighting was listed out of service by a NOTAM issued 15 days prior to the accident. There was no record of the pilot receiving a weather briefing or NOTAMs. No temporary repairs to restore the tower lighting had been initiated. The 928 feet MSL tower was depicted on the VFR navigation chart with the symbol for group obstructions. Another 775 feet MSL tower was positioned on the same hill, about 2,100 feet east of the 928 feet MSL tower. The top of that tower was illuminated by a single flashing red light. The FAA did not have the authority to deny or approve construction of obstructions to air navigation, or to mandate the marking and lighting of the obstructions, or the repair of lighting outages. The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) did require marking and lighting of radio towers with licensed FCC transmitters. The FCC did not publish a time limit in which lighting outage had to be repaired.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain a proper altitude, and insufficient obstruction lighting requirements established by the Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Communications Commission.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC96FA061
- Event ID
- 20001208X05307
- Case number
- NYC96FA061
- 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 1996-02-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 63a05608a300efdd01d46fb5bae05d68b1a79c9887512eab662c87e2583a650f; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:26:19.049Z.