NYC96FA157 · Cessna 182P
Cessna 182P · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Martha's Vineyard Airport (MVY) to Knox County Regional Airport (RKD)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC96FA157
- 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 182P
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N9920E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Martha's Vineyard Airport (MVY), MARTHA'S VINYRD, MATo Knox County Regional Airport (RKD), Rockland, ME
- 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
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Brewer, ME, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot performed a missed approach at his destination and flew to an alternate airport. During two ILS approaches at his alternate, the airplane did not descend to minimums, which resulted in two missed approaches. After initiating the second missed approach, the airplane collided with terrain in an uncontrolled descent. Examination of the accident site revealed evidence that the airplane had crashed in a steep descent. No preimpact failure of the airframe, engine, or instruments was found; however, the airplane was extensively damaged during impact. The investigation revealed that the pilot received 64 hours of dual instruction over a 6 month period in 1994, before his first solo flight. He acquired a total of 103 hours of dual flight instruction and 32 hours of solo flight over 14 months before he obtained his private pilot certificate. The pilot obtained instrument training over another 10 month period, and obtained his instrument rating in Florida on July 17, and departed for Maine on July 18. This was the pilot's first solo flight in actual instrument conditions. Before the accident flight, the pilot's actual weather experience totaled 6/10 of an hour, which was acquired during 3 separate flights with a certified flight instructor.
Probable cause
failure of the pilot to maintain control of the airplane, during a missed approach, after diverting to an alternate destination, while on his first solo flight in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC).
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC96FA157
- Event ID
- 20001208X06331
- Case number
- NYC96FA157
- 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: 572f7152af14779f0daba74d2a990beadd62cbecca4167e340cb7da35d68331d; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:16:00.002Z.