FTW99FA033 · Cessna 172N
Lentz Flying Service Cessna 172N · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Ellington Airport (EFD) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW99FA033
- 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 172N
- 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
- N4908D
- Operator
- Lentz Flying Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ellington Airport (EFD), Houston, TXTo 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
- 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); Wire, static
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, inadequate
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on a local VFR flight, the non-instrument rated private pilot encountered instrument meteorological conditions, and subsequently, the airplane collided with power lines and terrain. At the time of departure, the weather conditions at the airport were visibility 5 miles in mist and ceiling broken at 2,200 feet. About 7 minutes after the airplane's departure, the local controller noted that a fog bank was moving towards the airport from the southeast. About 17 minutes after departure, the airplane collided with 120-foot high power lines approximately 10 miles southeast of the airport. The collision severed the left wing, and the airplane then impacted on a road and slid into a ditch. Witnesses reported that it was 'very foggy' when the accident occurred. Examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of any pre-impact mechanical discrepancies that would have prevented normal operation. The pilot had 124 hours total flight time, of which 2.3 hours were under simulated instrument conditions.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadvertent VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions and his inability to maintain adequate altitude/clearance from the wire. Contributing to the accident were the fog, low ceilings and his lack of instrument time.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW99FA033
- Event ID
- 20001211X11418
- Case number
- FTW99FA033
- 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: 1eb0ced2400597bda819965a8008b29966c6ab7de5f238c56129045846d58ad7; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:18:57.740Z.