IAD97FA011 · Ryan NAVION
Ryan NAVION · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From College Park Airport (CGS) to UCA · Utica, NY
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD97FA011
- 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
Ryan NAVION
- Aircraft type
- Ryan NAVION
- 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
- N4564K
- Operator
- Terry L Claassen · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From College Park Airport (CGS), College Park, MDTo UCA · Utica, NY
- 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 initial 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot had flown 1 hour and 35 minutes in IMC conditions uneventfully. Upon arrival, the pilot was given a vector to intercept the localizer and was cleared for the ILS Runway 33 approach. Approximately one minute later the pilot reported to the tower '... on the approach' and was cleared to land. Radar data showed that the airplane intercepted the localizer path, and a left turn continued to a southwesterly direction. The airplane descended through 3,000 feet and radar contact was lost. A witness 1/4 mile from the accident site said he heard and saw the airplane pulling straight up, and he observed the right wing separate. Wreckage was located about 7 miles southeast of the airport in a wooded area, and was scattered over a distance of 200 feet. The right flap panel was suspended in a tree, 75 feet high at the accident site. The right and left wings were 102 and 93 feet southwest of the main wreckage. Inspection of the wing roots revealed the right and left wing spars were fractured at 45 degrees from the top to lower spar caps. About 1/4 mile from the accident site, the weather was reported to be 500 foot overcast with 4 miles visibility in rain showers. The attitude indicator was examined at the NTSB Lab. The NTSB report stated: '...Visual examination of the case disclosed no evidence of rotation damage.'
Probable cause
A loss of control for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD97FA011
- Event ID
- 20001208X06897
- Case number
- IAD97FA011
- 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: 1576c4ac1fbf3b5e0e26e3ad40ec3bac24b1aa4a59b70032b22b75cd19458b36; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:09:49.726Z.