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MIA99FA050 · Cessna 172L

23 Jun 1998 · Macclenny, FL, United States

Cessna 172L · Accident: in flight encounter with weather

From Statesboro Bulloch County Airport (TBR) to Pompano Beach Airpark (PMP)

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Event

NTSB case
MIA99FA050
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
2 · 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 172L

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
N3853Q
Operator
Mohammad R. Darvishian · private individual
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Statesboro Bulloch County Airport (TBR), Statesboro, GATo Pompano Beach Airpark (PMP), Pompano Beach, FL
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
Unknown
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 › Preflight briefing service, not obtained
  • Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, encountered

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The student pilot conducted a VFR cross country flight. Neither a flight plan was filed nor was a weather briefing obtained. Visibility of 2 miles in smoke and haze was reported at 1855 and 1955 hours at reporting station 13 miles to the ast of the crash site. The student pilot encountered instrument flight conditions. The airplane collided with tress and terrain fatally injuring the pilot and one passenger. The student pilot had recorded a total of 2 hours of simulated instrument flight time.

Probable cause

The student pilot's attempted VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions, resulting in a subsequent in-flight collision with trees and terrain. Contributing factors were, haze/smoke, the student pilot's failure to obtain a preflight weather briefing, the student pilot's lack of total experience in type operation, and trees.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record MIA99FA050
Event ID
20001211X10393
Case number
MIA99FA050
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: 51b5bb2bad242c753e4d4f94ef961761b24bb0f432d98d19ec4de0f415b3efc2; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:31:51.203Z.