FTW98LA335 · Cessna 172M
Flight Training Cessna 172M · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From FTG · WATKINS, CO to Front Range Airport
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA335
- 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 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
- N5147N
- Operator
- Flight Training
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From FTG · WATKINS, COTo Front Range Airport
- 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 collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot flew to Centennial Airport to practice touch and go landings. He departed the airport traffic pattern on an easterly heading, tuned the no. 1 navigation receiver to the Falcon Vortac, and rotated the OBS (Omni Bearing Selector) to 350 degrees. It was his intention to cross the 360 degree radial (sic, 180 degree radial), and then fly direct to the Falcon Vortac and direct to Front Range Airport. This route would avoid the Buckley ANG and Denver International Airport airspace. After he flew what he thought was an easterly heading the evidence indicates it was most probably a south-southeasterly heading) for 8 to 10 minutes and noting the CDI (Course Deviation Indicator) needle had failed to center, he made a shallow 360 degree turn and looked for recognizable landmarks. He then rotated the OBS to go direct to the Falcon Vortac, 'reset the directional gyro to the magnetic compass, making a significant correction,' and descended to 6,500 feet msl. After flying this heading for a minute, the airplane collided with terrain 11 miles southeast of Centennial Airport. Weather conditions at Centennial Airport consisted of clear skies and greater than 10 miles visibility. The pilot said it was a dark night.
Probable cause
Flight at an altitude insufficient to clear terrain. Factors were the pilot's failure to reset or correct a precessing directional gyro, his becoming lost/disoriented, and dark night light conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA335
- Event ID
- 20001211X10597
- Case number
- FTW98LA335
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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 1998-07-27.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f936352b51f7f06aa46c0f9f3ff52f96f3ff1437d6349781a8bc5b739a1133b2; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:18:24.141Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. The narrative states the pilot intended to fly "direct to the Falcon Vortac and direct to Front Range Airport"; the destination was not recorded.