NYC97FA186 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Jefferson County Airpark (2G2) to Williamsport Regional Airport (IPT)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC97FA186
- 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
- Unknown
Cessna 172
- 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
- N35405
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jefferson County Airpark (2G2), STUEBENVILLE, OHTo Williamsport Regional Airport (IPT), Williamsport, 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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 › Distance/altitude, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, improper
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed on a night VFR flight from Steubenville, Ohio to Williamsport, Pennsylvania by way of the Indian Head VOR. The airplane flew past the VOR and then collided with trees and terrain heading back in the direction of the VOR and the departure airport. The airplane collided with an unlighted ridge, about 2,800 feet msl. Both the sun and the moon were below the horizon at the time of the accident. According to a witness, the ridgeline was partially obscured by clouds. Another witness approximately 1/2 mile from the accident site said that he heard the airplane but did not see it. He stated: 'The engine was revved up -- really loud -- I mean max. I kept looking for the plane, but I never saw it.' A weather observation taken at the time of the accident reported cloud layers at 1,000 feet, 2,500 feet and 3,300 feet with mist. Examination of the wreckage and the airplane's engine revealed no pre-impact anomalies. Five different witnesses described the pilot's propensity to sleep at the flight controls.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate clearance above an unlighted ridgeline in clouds and fog at night, and his decision to not file an IFR flight plan and his VFR flight into IMC conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC97FA186
- Event ID
- 20001208X08909
- Case number
- NYC97FA186
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1997-09-24.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 3b5c64785a37d27b9630cd1613a71393984963a1cf81385e163920d1c6fa3c9b; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:48:29.512Z.