NYC92FA150 · Cessna 340
Marketplace America Cessna 340 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Middle Georgia Regional Airport (MCN) to Gerald R. Ford International Airport (GRR)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC92FA150
- 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
Cessna 340
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 340
- 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
- N194S
- Operator
- Marketplace America
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Middle Georgia Regional Airport (MCN), Macon, GATo Gerald R. Ford International Airport (GRR), Grand Rapids, MI
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spiral, inadvertent
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, attempted
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE AIRPLANE WAS CRUISING AT 16,500 FEET AT NIGHT WHEN RADAR AND RADIO CONTACT WERE LOST. THE PILOT MADE NO DISTRESS RADIO CALLS. RECORDED RADAR DATA SHOWED THE AIRPLANE IN A LEFT DESCENDING TURN. OTHER AIRPLANES WERE DEVIATING AROUND WEATHER IN THE AREA. GROUND WITNESSES HEARD THE AIRPLANE PRIOR TO IMPACT AND REPORTED RAIN. THE PILOT STARTED FLYING LESSONS IN MARCH AND RECEIVED HIS MULTI-ENGINE RATING IN JUNE. HE HAD A TOTAL OF 142 HOURS FLIGHT TIME, WITH 25 HOURS IN THIS MAKE AND MODEL AIRPLANE AND 9 HOURS TOTAL NIGHT TIME. THE PILOT WAS NOT INSTRUMENT RATED.
Probable cause
THE IMPROPER DECISION BY THE NON-INSTRUMENT-RATED PILOT TO ATTEMPT VFR FLIGHT INTO INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS RESULTING IN A LOSS OF AIRPLANE CONTROL AND SUBSEQUENT INADVERTENT SPIRAL AND COLLISION WITH THE GROUND. FACTORS RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: THE PILOT'S LACK OF TOTAL FLIGHT EXPERIENCE; THE PILOT'S LACK OF FLIGHT TIME IN THIS MAKE AND MODEL AIRPLANE; AND HIS OVERCONFIDENCE IN HIS OWN ABILITY.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC92FA150
- Event ID
- 20001211X15483
- Case number
- NYC92FA150
- 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 1992-08-08.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1a55287de9e2836c4bcfbe10af0f13fb2b092ab81cfd1c6641509b8cce81183d; retrieved 2026-09-21T01:00:04.380Z.