IAD96LA149 · Cessna 172P
Cessna 172P · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From Raleigh County Memorial Airport (BKW) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD96LA149
- 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 172P
- 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
- N848LF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Raleigh County Memorial Airport (BKW), Beckley, WVTo 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 · climb to 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
- 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
- Check pilot › Supervision, inadequate
- Flightcrew › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Flightcrew › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Two pilots and a CAP check pilot were on an instructional flight at a CAP sponsored mountain flying clinic. The left seat pilot was on his first mission at the clinic. The right seat pilot was a CAP check pilot and was providing instruction on contour mountain searches. While flying at about 500 feet below a ridge at 70 knots with 10 degrees of flaps, the occupants noticed that the terrain was rising in front of them. The check pilot directed the left seat pilot to apply full power, climb, and fly straight-ahead. The airplane impacted trees in a wings level climbing attitude and came to rest inverted in the trees.
Probable cause
improper in-flight planning/decision by the flight crew, and inadequate supervision by the check pilot, which resulted in the flight crew's failure to maintain altitude/clearance from trees on rising terrain. A factor relating to the accident was: rising/mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD96LA149
- Event ID
- 20001208X06757
- Case number
- IAD96LA149
- 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: 12e8c1bb1f640fcc5fcadc1be642646ed4e389c662a4cf3dce9bf2b12c228209; retrieved 2026-09-22T21:05:48.269Z.