FTW98FA372 · Cessna 175A
Cessna 175A · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From 48V to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98FA372
- 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
- 3 · 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 175A
- 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
- N6874E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 48VTo not recorded
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed(vs), not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall/spin, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot had an estimated 250 hours of flight experience and flew into Tri-County Airport (his second trip) to visit family members. The pilot was observed fueling his airplane before loading 3 passengers for a sight-seeing flight. The weight was calculated to be 50 pounds over maximum gross weight. He was seen taking off on runway 15 (elevation 5,130 feet; density altitude 8,185 feet) and a witness observed a wind shift to 300 degrees, 12 to 18 knots. Another witness observed a longer than normal takeoff; and at 50 to 100 feet the airplane's right wing dropped abruptly and the airplane spun half a turn to the ground. The pilot was visiting from the Dallas, Texas, area. Center of gravity and performance data could not be calculated due to configuration and envelope limitations.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain flying speed (above stall speed) and the subsequent stall/spin. Contributing factors were the tailwind, high density altitude, and aircraft overweight conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98FA372
- Event ID
- 20001211X10834
- Case number
- FTW98FA372
- 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: 949eb10f3674b716127a0f90bb13bf1c27d6c621379858868304379760b5fbec; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:27:12.561Z.