NYC98LA012 · Cessna 172P
Cessna 172P · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From Danbury Municipal Airport (DXR) to Edward F Knapp State Airport (MPV)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC98LA012
- 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
- Instrument 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
- N62264
- Operator
- John N. Campbell · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Danbury Municipal Airport (DXR), Danbury, CTTo Edward F Knapp State Airport (MPV), Montpelier, VT
- 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 · descent
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, poor
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, performed
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Pittsfield, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument rated, private pilot was flying in partial visual flight rules (VFR) conditions when he encountered instrument flight rules (IFR) conditions. The pilot continued the flight using a hand held global positioning system (GPS) receiver for navigation. While descending below the cloud layer in an attempt to reach VFR conditions the airplane struck a tree. The airplane remained in flight and a successful landing was made at a nearby airport. The pilot reported he did not receive a weather briefing, and obtained weather information for the flight by viewing the 'weather channel,' and listening to a radio broadcast from the National Weather Service.
Probable cause
The pilot's poor in-flight decision to continue VFR flight in IFR conditions. Factor's in this accident were the pilot's inadequate pre-flight planning, and fog.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC98LA012
- Event ID
- 20001208X09106
- Case number
- NYC98LA012
- 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: 4b5e4e0de7aa157e92e0f8a5468f288e15e0155f574b9788b57c459907e503bd; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:21:54.763Z.