FTW98FA287 · Cessna 175
Cessna 175 · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Mid Valley Airpark (E98) to Clovis Municipal Airport (CVN)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98FA287
- 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 175
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 175
- 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
- N7366M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mid Valley Airpark (E98), Los Lunas, NMTo Clovis Municipal Airport (CVN)
- 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
- 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
- Wire, transmission
- 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
- Object › Wire, transmission
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Go-around, attempted
- Pilot in command › Proper glidepath, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument rated private pilot (237 hours of flight experience) was a professional truck driver and had worked 12 hours on the day of the accident. The pilot departed at 2200 (he had 5.2 hours of night experience during the last 18 months). The moon set at 2255. Witnesses reported seeing a large spark which lit up the sky on the approach end of runway 4. The power went out at the airport, including the runway lights. N7366M was seen flying low over the runway and applying power to go-around. The airplane was found in a cornfield 1,500 feet left of runway centerline. The approach track to runway 4 crosses transmission lines 3,510 feet from the PAPI indicated runway touchdown point (the three top lines were found separated). It could not be determined if the pilot had training or exposure to the PAPI system. The pilot last flew with his flight instructor (in N7366M) on March 19, 1998; the flight instructor observed that the attitude indicator was not functioning properly. No documentation was found which indicated that the attitude indicator had been fixed.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate obstacle clearance and the proper landing glide path. Also causal was his loss of aircraft control during an attempted go-around. Factors were the dark night light conditions, the pilot's recent lack of sleep, and the pilot's lack of recent night flying experience.,
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98FA287
- Event ID
- 20001211X10295
- Case number
- FTW98FA287
- 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: 9b7668734600cc54d11bc3cd6219d3d8d429b49d80f0c0a6dfa4c966548865fa; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:31:37.404Z.