BFO93FA030 · American General Aircraft AG5B
American General Aircraft AG5B · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Floyd Bennett Memorial Airport (GFL) to Lake Placid Airport (LKP)
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO93FA030
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
American General Aircraft AG5B
- Aircraft type
- American General AG5
- 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
- N1192Z
- Operator
- A. Bashawaty/John Derubeis
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Floyd Bennett Memorial Airport (GFL), Glens Falls, NYTo Lake Placid Airport (LKP), Lake Placid, 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
- 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)
- 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 › Altitude, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Vergennes, VT, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
ON A FLIGHT FROM GLENN FALLS TO LAKE PLACID, NY, THE NON INSTRUMENT RATED PILOT ENCOUNTERED DETERIORATING WEATHER. ATC DATA SHOWED THIS OCCURRED OVER MOUNTAINOUS TERRAIN AT ABOUT 1517 EST NEAR BURLINGTON, VT. THE PILOT ELECTED TO RETURN TO GLENN FALLS. AT ABOUT 1521, HE TOLD THE CONTROLLER HE HAD LAKE CHAMPLAIN IN VIEW. THE LAKE WAS MOSTLY FROZEN OVER WITH APRX 3 FT OF SNOW ON THE SURFACE. ABOUT 5 MIN LATER, RADAR SERVICE WAS TERMINATED, AND THE PILOT ACKNOWLEDGED. NO FURTHER TRANSMISSIONS BY THE PILOT WERE RECEIVED. WRECKAGE WAS FOUND ON THE FROZEN SURFACE OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN NEAR THE VERMONT SHORE. AN EXAM REVEALED THE AIRPLANE HAD IMPACTED THE ICE IN A RIGHT WING LOW ATTITUDE. IT WAS EXTENSIVELY DAMAGED, BUT NO PREIMPACT ANOMALIES OF THE AIRFRAME OR ENGINE WERE FOUND. A WITNESS ON THE NEW YORK LAKE SHORE SAW AN AIRPLANE AT ABOUT THE TIME OF THE ACCIDENT, IN A STEEP LEFT TURN AT ABOUT 250 FT AGL. HE STATED HE LOST SIGHT OF THE AIRPLANE DUE TO THE BAD WEATHER. HE ALSO STATED THAT AT THE TIME HE SAW THE AIRPLANE, A SEVERE BLIZZARD WAS MOVING ACROSS THE AREA AND IT LASTED ABOUT 15 MIN.
Probable cause
VFR FLIGHT BY THE PILOT INTO INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS (IMC), AND HIS FAILURE TO MAINTAIN SUFFICIENT ALTITUDE OR CLEARANCE FROM SNOW COVERED TERRAIN AFTER BECOMING SPATIALLY DISORIENTED IN WHITEOUT CONDITIONS. THE ADVERSE WEATHER AND SNOW COVERED TERRAIN WERE RELATED FACTORS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO93FA030
- Event ID
- 20001211X11782
- Case number
- BFO93FA030
- 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: ffefd5f2a141e1e99475722c35761971464af4498beca10f77f78af54b6d772d; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:42:12.299Z.