IAD96LA120 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From Long Island MacArthur Airport (ISP) to Morrisville-Stowe State Airport (MVL)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD96LA120
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172
- 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
- N5091G
- Operator
- Brad W. Brenner · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Long Island MacArthur Airport (ISP), Islip, NYTo Morrisville-Stowe State Airport (MVL), VT
- 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
- 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 terrain/water
- 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 › IFR procedure, not followed
- Pilot in command › Proper altitude, not maintained
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Stowe, VT, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
While approaching from the southwest, the pilot was cleared for an NDB approach to the Morrisville Airport. To perform the approach, he was to proceed outbound (050 deg) from the initial approach fix (IAF), make a procedure turn at or above 4,000 ft within 10 nautical miles of the NDB, proceed inbound to the NDB on a course of 230 deg with a minimum altitude of 3,000 ft to the final approach fix (FAF), then fly a course of 223 deg for 2.4 miles to the airport with a minimum descent altitude of 2,000 ft. The pilot stated that he proceeded (outbound from the IAF) on a heading of 050 degrees for about two minutes, completed a procedure turn and took a heading of about 245 to 250 degrees to compensate for the wind conditions. He said he descended to 3000 ft, then 2500 ft after crossing the NDB. He said the needle swing seemed appropriate. However, he was off course. An FAA inspector reported that during the approach, a crosswind blew the airplane off-course to the east, which resulted in an impact with Elmore Mountain (southeast of the FAF). The pilot received his instrument rating on 4/13/96 and had accumulated 4.7 hrs of actual instrument time. The inspector stated that the pilot had made one ADF approach in non-mountainous terrain since the issuance of his instrument rating.
Probable cause
failure of the pilot to follow proper IFR procedures and to maintain proper terrain clearance (altitude) during an NDB approach. Factors related to the accident were: the pilot's lack of instrument experience, low ceiling, and mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD96LA120
- Event ID
- 20001208X06265
- Case number
- IAD96LA120
- 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: 94f451badc9b343d6b4044819f02f5faf1b90344cd1885be5d9f78078d250fad; retrieved 2026-09-22T21:47:57.808Z.