NYC98FA066 · Cessna 172P
Montgomery Aviation Cessna 172P · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Montgomery County Airpark (GAI) to York Airport (THV)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC98FA066
- 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
- N54172
- Operator
- Montgomery Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montgomery County Airpark (GAI), Gaithersburg, MDTo York Airport (THV)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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/spin
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was on final approach to a 4,448 foot long runway with a displaced threshold of 740 feet. A passenger in a landing helicopter stated '...Our position was approx. 1/3 down the runway and as far left in the taxiway area finishing final approach. We were down to 15-20 ft. As I continued to observe the aircraft. The wings began to seesaw left and right, back and forth and then the airplane dropped sharply and I observed debris fly up from below the drop off at the end of the runway.' Another witnesses observed the airplane pitched down more than 60 degrees and in a turn. The airplane impacted a grass knoll about 300 feet from the displaced threshold of the runway, and came to rest inverted. Examination of the wreckage did not reveal any pre-impact malfunctions of the airframe or engine.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed during final approach which resulted in an inadvertent stall/spin.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC98FA066
- Event ID
- 20001211X09600
- Case number
- NYC98FA066
- 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: e2c357853bb2f36b90264cfaa83af07a51d423aa0f21d29cfcfee93d9544d802; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:40:39.805Z.