ATL97LA056 · Cessna A188B
Cessna A188B · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while maneuvering
From No airport to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL97LA056
- 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
- 1 · 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 A188B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 188
- 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
- N53212
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From No airportTo 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Maneuvering · aerial application
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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 › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
- Wing › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was attempting to spray a wheat field which was 4 1/2 miles south of the departure airport. It crashed in a heavily wooded area 1 mile south of the wheat field. According to the Cessna investigator, the airplane was within the center of gravity and weight limits. The Cessna representative also reported the left horizontal stabilizer and elevator were separated from the main wreckage. He also believed the flaps were extended one notch. Further examination of the wreckage showed the right wing was fractured along the chord line from the leading edge to the rear spar. This occurred at the rib inboard of the strut attachment point on the wing. Aft of the rear spar, the wing panel exhibited 45 degree buckling on either side of the fracture. The top cap of the front spar exhibited double bending; the outboard bend was down, and the inboard bend was up. At the inboard bend, the spar was fractured. The fracture had a 45 degree bevel and no shear lips, consistent with a tensile overload failure.
Probable cause
The failure of the right wing after the pilot exceeded the design stress limit of the airplane, leading to a loss of control in flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL97LA056
- Event ID
- 20001208X07663
- Case number
- ATL97LA056
- 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: f00f82da287c2b0669fb115b9d319ef803a4082fd53dc76f87caec208dbd35c3; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:00:26.026Z.