NYC97LA012 · Socata TB 9 TAMPICO TB 9 TAMPI
Socata TB 9 TAMPICO TB 9 TAMPI · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during landing
From Spring Hill Airport (70N) to Sullivan County International Airport (MSV)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC97LA012
- 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
Socata TB 9 TAMPICO TB 9 TAMPI
- Aircraft type
- Socata TB-9
- 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
- N5541C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Spring Hill Airport (70N), STERLING, PATo Sullivan County International Airport (MSV), Monticello, 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
- Landing · emergency landing
- 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
- On ground/water 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area, selected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot was on a solo cross-country flight, when he became lost and landed at an unfamiliar airport. He departed to return to his original destination and became lost again. The flight was airborne for several hours, when the fuel supply became low, and the pilot elected to make a precautionary landing on a road. During the precautionary landing, the right wing impacted an embankment and broke off. Examination of the wreckage did not disclose any mechanical failure, nor did the pilot report any. The right fuel tank was empty, and the left fuel tank had only 4 gallons of fuel remaining. The fuel selector was in the left fuel tank position.
Probable cause
the student pilot's selection of an unsuitable area for a precautionary landing. Factors relating to the accident were: the student becoming lost, the subsequent low fuel condition, and the embankment in the emergency landing area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC97LA012
- Event ID
- 20001208X07105
- Case number
- NYC97LA012
- 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: 3df7cc5e972bce94b29143bd4583a92d919f587d0fc70eb0b7a9cdd0aedc64d3; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:49:13.323Z.