ANC93FA175 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC93FA175
- 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 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N95277
- Operator
- Hale, Demetrius · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE STUDENT PILOT RECEIVED HIS SOLO ENDORSEMENT 126 DAYS EARLIER. HE WAS NOT CURRENT AND DID NOT COMPLY WITH THE REQUIREMENTS SET BY THE ORGANIZATION THAT RENTED THE AIRPLANES. NO ONE KNEW THAT HE WAS GOING TO FLY. HIS LAST RECORDED FLIGHT WAS AUGUST 30, 1993. ACCORDING TO THE OWNERS OF THE OPERATION, THE FLIGHT WAS UNAUTHORIZED. THE STUDENT PILOT WAS DOING TOUCH AND GO LANDINGS AT NIGHT AND DURING THE CROSSWIND TURN TO THE DOWNWIND LEG THE AIRPLANE DESCENDED INTO THE GROUND AT A STEEP ANGLE. THE CROSSWIND LEG WAS OVER A DARK, UNLIT AREA.
Probable cause
THE STUDENT PILOT'S FAILURE TO MAINTAIN CONTROL OF THE AIRPLANE DUE TO SPATIAL DISORIENTATION. FACTORS WERE THE DARK NIGHT AND THE INADEQUATE SURVEILLANCE OF THE OPERATION BY THE CLUB MANAGEMENT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC93FA175
- Event ID
- 20001211X13281
- Case number
- ANC93FA175
- 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 1993-09-13.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b81979353c9c4c4481c369e1a9b980eda0a916d8d98628bfd7e560c04f0e3c55; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:23:21.795Z.