MIA97FA176 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From Luis Munoz Marin International Airport (SJU) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA97FA176
- 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
- 3 · 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 172N
- 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
- N4752D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Luis Munoz Marin International Airport (SJU), San Juan, PRTo 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 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
- Maneuvering · turn to reverse direction
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Comerío, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses saw the airplane flying at low altitude and turn into rising terrain. According to witness statements, the airplane was seen performing a '360 degree turn in a clockwise direction...in a straight and level attitude,' heading toward rising terrain; it then 'hit' a palm tree and crashed into a private residence. The terrain was rising from an estimated elevation of about 660 feet mean sea level (msl) at the lowest point. The elevation at the crash site was about 1,815 feet msl, and the top of the rising terrain was about 3,630 feet msl. Several witnesses, who had reached the crash site, said the airplane came to rest in a house, but at first, there was no fire. The passenger in the left rear seat was the first to be removed. The other three occupants were still in the wreckage when a fire erupted. According to the witnesses, the fire started about 25 to 30 minutes after the accident. The fire was too intense to remove any of the other victims. There was no injures to ground personnel. Control continuity was established to all flight controls. Disassembly of the engine did not reveal any discrepancies.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper in-flight planning/decision, which resulted in his failure to maintain sufficient altitude/clearance from obstructions on rising terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA97FA176
- Event ID
- 20001208X08187
- Case number
- MIA97FA176
- 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: 27c8bf7eff877618813229d62ce45a37343e33ef218c5d14622c298a4ba09dde; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:56:35.068Z.