IAD97LA084 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Williams County Airport (0G6) to Whalen Heliport (OH30)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD97LA084
- 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 172M
- 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
- N5267R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Williams County Airport (0G6), Bryan, OHTo Whalen Heliport (OH30)
- 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 go-around
- 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
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot arrived at his destination in a high wind condition with a strong crosswind component. The approach to the runway started too high and too close, so the pilot utilized full flaps. The airplane did not touch down and with no runway remaining, the pilot elected to go around. The pilot made a left climbing turn to avoid flying over water and a restricted area located a 1.5 miles away. In the excitement of the go around, the pilot forgot to raise the flaps. He reported that the airplane would not climb and kept losing altitude. Witnesses reported that the airplane was descending and fishtailing in a nose up attitude when the wing collided with a tree. The airplane impacted the ground and came to rest inverted. No mechanical problems were reported by the pilot.
Probable cause
Pilot in command failed to maintain control of the airplane. Factors to the accident where high wind conditions with a strong crosswind component and the pilot's inadvertent failure to raise the flaps during the go around.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD97LA084
- Event ID
- 20001208X08148
- Case number
- IAD97LA084
- 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: 7b9d7c95db383d29d8d0cff954d2b06d42a51891447247f1f4b867222849a29c; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:25:40.663Z.