MIA97FA249 · Cessna 177RG
Cessna 177RG · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Orlando International Airport (MCO) to Florida Keys Marathon International Airport (MTH)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA97FA249
- 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
- 2 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 177RG
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N2562V
- Operator
- Robert T. Bickel · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Orlando International Airport (MCO), Orlando, FLTo Florida Keys Marathon International Airport (MTH), Marathon, FL
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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
- Pilot in command › Flight into adverse weather, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight was operating in an area of isolated thunderstorms. While en route at 6,000 feet, the pilot was cleared to descend to 5,000 feet. He acknowledged the clearance, then there was no further radio contact with the pilot. Shortly thereafter, radar contact was lost. Witnesses heard the aircraft descending rapidly, then it crash into a lake. Also, witnesses reported that rain was falling hard, and the wind was blowing hard over the lake at the time of the crash. Recovery of a large portion of the aircraft from the lake showed all components of the aircraft necessary for flight were on the aircraft at impact. There was evidence that the aircraft impacted in a right wing and nose low attitude. The propeller had damage consistent with rotation at the time of the accident. The pilot had received his instrument rating about 48 days before the accident. He had accumulated about 25 hours of actual instrument flight time and 50 hours of simulated instrument flight time.
Probable cause
continued flight by the pilot into adverse weather conditions, and his failure to maintain aircraft control, which resulted in an uncontrolled descent until impact in a lake. The adverse weather condition (thunderstorm) was a related factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA97FA249
- Event ID
- 20001208X08895
- Case number
- MIA97FA249
- 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: b52ea9140d5901fbd02a93fffe2b1ce5d6f862236ff88bc097b9b12f2cb3d8fc; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:49:05.433Z.