IAD98FA072 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Hartford Brainard Airport (HFD) to Windham Airport (IJD)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD98FA072
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172M
- 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
- N12912
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hartford Brainard Airport (HFD), Hartford, CTTo Windham Airport (IJD), Willimantic, 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
- 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 encounter with weather
- 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); Tree(s)
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, inadvertent
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Hebron, CT, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument rated private pilot departed in night visual meteorological conditions without obtaining a weather briefing. Weather at the destination airport, 22 miles east of the departure airport, was IMC. Satellite imagery taken at about the time of the accident, revealed low stratus clouds and fog present at the accident site area. Radar data indicated that about 9 miles east of the destination airport, the airplane initiated a right hand turn, and completed two circles, with the radius of the second circle smaller than the first. The airplane's altitude readout fluctuated throughout the maneuver. The airplane impacted in a heavily wooded area and was scattered over 250 feet. Examination of the wreckage did not reveal any pre-impact malfunctions of the airframe or engine.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to obtain a weather briefing which resulted in inadvertent flight into instrument meteorological conditions, and his failure to maintain control of the airplane due to spatial disorientation. Factors in this accident were low ceilings and fog.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD98FA072
- Event ID
- 20001211X10331
- Case number
- IAD98FA072
- 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 1998-06-22.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 7ee53980c3e654905391331ce6bddaee5c82aeddefa214e6e43957fe094c85ef; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:31:57.996Z.