DEN92FA088 · Cessna 175A
Skylarkers Cessna 175A · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From 2V1 to Four Corners Regional Airport (FMN)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN92FA088
- 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
- 4 · 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 175A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 175
- 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
- N7032E
- Operator
- Skylarkers
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 2V1To Four Corners Regional Airport (FMN), Farmington, NM
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE NON INSTRUMENT RATED PILOT DEPARTED RUNWAY 01 ON A DARK CLEAR NIGHT WITH NO MOON. A WITNESS SAID THE AIRPLANE MADE AN IMMEDIATE SHARP LEFT BANK, THEN AN IMMEDIATE RIGHT BANK, FOLLOWED BY ANOTHER LEFT BANK AND AN IMMEDIATE RIGHT BANK. HE THEN LOST SIGHT OF THE AIRPLANE. THE AIRPLANE IMPACTED THE RUNWAY CLEAR ZONE APPROXIMATELY 0.5 MILES BEYOND THE DEPARTURE END OF THE RUNWAY. NO AIRFRAME OR POWERPLANT DISCREPANCIES WERE DISCOVERED.
Probable cause
THE PILOT EXPERIENCING SPATIAL DISORIENTATION AND HIS FAILURE TO MAINTAIN AIRCRAFT CONTROL. FACTORS WERE: THE PILOT'S TOTAL LACK OF INSTRUMENT EXPERIENCE AND DARK NIGHT CONDITIONS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN92FA088
- Event ID
- 20001211X15385
- Case number
- DEN92FA088
- 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 1992-08-29.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 598c4845ef3eba727a783b12640bbeee4ed0d3143549500eae66d968f6cede96; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:58:21.880Z.