CHI99FA053 · Cessna C-172R
Cessna C-172R · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Fort Wayne International Airport (FWA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99FA053
- 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
- 1 · 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 C-172R
- Aircraft type
- Cessna C-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
- N989CP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Wayne International Airport (FWA), Fort Wayne, INTo 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was destroyed on impact with an agricultural field. Radar data the showed that the accident aircraft departed to the northeast at 3,400 feet and tracked east-northeast towards De Kalb County Airport, Auburn, Indiana where the aircraft descended. It then proceeded northbound to the Tri-State Steuben County Airport, Angola, Indiana, where there were three descents. The aircraft then proceeded towards the west and then turned towards the east at an altitude of 1,700 feet mean sea level (MSL). The last radar return was at 1445:12 at 1,700 feet MSL. The aircraft impacted the ground about 700 feet from a relative's house. A family member of the pilot stated that on previous flights, the pilot would do 'flybys' by the houses of people he knew. The family member also stated that they had rented a high wing airplane from the Angola Airport to go and perform 'flybys'. The family member described the 'flyby' as a circling maneuver at an altitude of approximately 3-4 times the height of the trees. The family member stated that he would hear a buzzer during the maneuver. No preimpact anomalies were found during inspection of the airplane or engine. Twelve gallons of fuel were recovered from the fuel tanks.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99FA053
- Event ID
- 20001211X11521
- Case number
- CHI99FA053
- 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: 130812eb8aa168ba43b48da91f213cfbd472cf2a10cbc2fe88e41bbf121c2ab4; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:16:59.289Z.