IAD97LA046 · Cessna 172P
Cessna 172P · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport (MGY) to Lawrence County Airpark (HTW)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD97LA046
- 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
- N62332
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport (MGY), Dayton, OHTo Lawrence County Airpark (HTW), OH
- 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 · VFR pattern turn to base
- 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
- Pilot in command › Proper altitude, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed at 0030 for a cross-country flight in night visual meteorological conditions. After a 2 hour flight, the pilot entered a left downwind for runway 26. Not satisfied with his approach, the pilot executed a go-around. He reentered the pattern on downwind for runway 8. Once established, the pilot reported that he turned base leg. After rolling wings level on base, the runway environment disappeared, and the landing light illuminated a row of trees. The pilot added full power, closed the carburetor heat, and established a climb attitude, but the airplane contacted trees and was damaged. Since no major impact occurred, the pilot reestablished his approach and completed the landing with no further occurrence, then taxied to the ramp. The pilot had 5.4 hours total night flight time, and this was his first night time logged as pilot-in-command.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain proper altitude during the approach at night. Related factors were: darkness, and the pilot's lack of night flying experience.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD97LA046
- Event ID
- 20001208X07411
- Case number
- IAD97LA046
- 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: 67cc1ee343d038de7e7f6e72a130107a81134d29797a58d6c1055338178f7296; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:22:15.568Z.