NYC98LA055 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From 1B9 to Igor I Sikorsky Memorial Airport (BDR)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC98LA055
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
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
- N9604H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 1B9To Igor I Sikorsky Memorial Airport (BDR), Bridgeport, CT
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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; Pole
- 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 › Ice/frost removal from aircraft, not performed
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Mansfield, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was observed to takeoff from runway 32 and climb to about 300 feet above the ground. It was then observed to turn to the left, in a nose down attitude, and disappear behind trees after which it collided with a pole and terrain coming to rest upright in a cleared area. Examination of the wreckage revealed an approximate half-inch coating of ice covering the top of the wings. Both horizontal stabilizers exhibited thin patchy areas of ice along their entire surfaces. Thin patches of ice were also found on the fuselage center section, and the leading edge of the right wing strut. Post-crash examination of the aircraft revealed no evidence of pre-impact mechanical malfunction. Precipitation at the airport between 1445 and 2045 on the day before the accident, was reported as mist, light rain, light rain and snow showers, and ending with light snow. The night before, and the day of the accident, the temperatures were below freezing.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to remove snow and ice from the aircraft prior to takeoff resulting in degraded climb performance and a subsequent stall/mush condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC98LA055
- Event ID
- 20001208X09373
- Case number
- NYC98LA055
- 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: 850fb16712897f7d060d8a5fcbb9c1c53a228b92b1682881dabc9992f077e533; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:40:45.683Z.