IAD98LA096 · Cessna 172G
Cessna 172G · Accident: in flight collision with object during initial climb
From No airport to 3G7 · NY
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD98LA096
- 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 172G
- 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
- N1308F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From No airportTo 3G7 · NY
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Unknown › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the new airplane owner, who occupied the left seat, the purpose of the flight was to fly the newly purchased airplane to the Williamson-Sodus Airport. He said he was not comfortable flying out of the grass strip, so he asked the previous owner to fly it to a nearby airport that he was comfortable with. He said they took off to the north, and the airplane veered to the right during the takeoff roll. Shortly after lift off, about 15 feet above the ground, the right wing struck trees on the right side of the runway, nosed into the trees, and came to rest opposite the direction of travel. The previous owner reported that there was no mechanical malfunction with the airplane and that the accident could have been prevented if there was more preparation. The manipulator of the controls was undetermined as the previous owner reported to the FAA that the new owner was at the controls at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
Directional control not maintained by one of the pilot's on board the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD98LA096
- Event ID
- 20001211X10879
- Case number
- IAD98LA096
- 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: ca8a74e6fc01030757f088e8d9f71b55cd1455ca356d3836bd9bd41f76632e3c; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:07:07.750Z.