NYC96LA068 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: nose over while standing
From Portland International Jetport (PWM) to Laurence G Hanscom Field (BED)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC96LA068
- 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
- 0 · 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 172M
- 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
- N61992
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Portland International Jetport (PWM), Portland, METo Laurence G Hanscom Field (BED)
- 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
- Standing · engine(s) operating
- 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
- Nose over
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Flight instructor(on ground) › Supervision, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Compensation for wind conditions, improper
- Weather condition › High wind
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Bedford, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
After returning from a cross-country flight and landing on runway 29, the student pilot stopped on a taxiway with the airplane heading about 200 degrees. The pilot reported: '...I landed very smoothly on runway 29...I throttled up a bit to expedite. Right wing wanted to lift. I set ailerons to compensate. I exited (the taxiway), crossed the threshold...A sudden sustained gust of wind came from my right rear. Stick was full forward and full left ailreon ... Right rear continued to lift and turned plane over ...' The winds were reported at 300 degrees at 28 knots. The student pilot was returning from a cross-country flight where he had diverted due to high winds and then received verbal approval to return home. Winds at the time of departure and arrival were in excess of the limitation placed in the student pilot's log book.
Probable cause
the flight instructor's inadequate supervision of the flight, the pilot's improper compensation for the wind conditions, and the high wind. The instructor's inadequate evaluation of the weather was a contributing factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC96LA068
- Event ID
- 20001208X05469
- Case number
- NYC96LA068
- 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: 85c3e4deccdd9728041b940df6b77f7f18fd2a36e8854759d6f7dd7d6d7ef44d; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:46:14.185Z.