BFO93LA059 · Cessna 172
Central Ohio Flying Assoc Cessna 172 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Grimes Field (I74) to The Ohio State University Airport - Don Scott Field (OSU)
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO93LA059
- 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 172
- 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
- N73436
- Operator
- Central Ohio Flying Assoc
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grimes Field (I74), Urbana, OHTo The Ohio State University Airport - Don Scott Field (OSU), Columbus, OH
- 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 · climb to 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
SHORTLY AFTER TAKEOFF FROM AN ELEVATION OF 1,060 FEET MSL IN VFR WEATHER, THE AIRPLANE ENCOUNTERED GROUND FOG. THE PILOT STATED THAT HE TRIED TO MANEUVER AROUND THE FOG, BUT THE AIRPLANE ENTERED ANOTHER LAYER OF GROUND FOG. SHORTLY AFTER THIS, HE GLANCED AT HIS INSTRUMENTS AND NOTICED THE AIRPLANE WAS DESCENDING. HE SAID HE STARTED TO ATTAIN A CLIMB ATTITUDE WHEN HE SAW THE TERRAIN DIRECTLY BELOW. HE SAID HE TRIED TO PULL UP BUT THE AIRPLANE IMPACTED THE GROUND. THE LOCAL WEATHER WAS REPORTING 6 TO 8 MILES VISIBILITY AND GROUND FOG. THE ACCIDENT OCCURRED AT AN ELEVATION OF 1,280 FEET MSL DURING THE HOURS OF DARKNESS. THE PRIVATE PILOT WAS NON INSTRUMENT RATED.
Probable cause
THE PILOT EXPERIENCED SPATIAL DISORIENTATION. CONTRIBUTING TO THE ACCIDENT WAS THE DARK NIGHT AND INADVERTENT FLIGHT INTO INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO93LA059
- Event ID
- 20001211X11932
- Case number
- BFO93LA059
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1993-03-26.
- API snapshot SHA-256: eeb4f1cf9d68940a757bf79c3c7388ebbbe995f006be8d54c8e48c333e02fec2; retrieved 2026-09-21T23:00:40.871Z.