IAD97FA122 · Cessna 172P
Cessna 172P · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Leesburg Executive Airport (JYO) to Lancaster Airport (LNS)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD97FA122
- 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 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
- N55221
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Leesburg Executive Airport (JYO), Leesburg, VATo Lancaster Airport (LNS), Lancaster, PA
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- 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
- Stall/mush
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
This was the first leg of the student pilot's first solo cross-country. The pilot had radioed the control tower that he was 10 miles southwest of the airport, and had requested a vector to the airport. He reported that the 'elevator felt mushy, but that it was no big deal.' There were no further transmissions from the pilot. According to radar data, the airplane's last 28 minutes 11 seconds consisted of numerous turns and significant changes of direction. The airplane impacted in a corn field, about 22 miles south of the airport. According to the pilot's log book, he had over 27 hours of total flight experience, which included 1 hour of solo flight experience. The last entry in his log book was 1 month prior to the accident, when he logged 0.3 hour dual. He also logged 0.6 hour solo flight experience 2 months prior to the accident. Examination of the wreckage did not disclose any anomalies with the airplane or the engine.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed which resulted in a stall/mush and subsequent collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD97FA122
- Event ID
- 20001208X08866
- Case number
- IAD97FA122
- 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: 0eaae3e42c7166f15f1305efca4965ea3e82473464df213e53d771da33c9cdd0; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:48:42.414Z.