MIA92GA024 · Cessna 172N
Okeechobee Co Sheriff'S Office Cessna 172N · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA92GA024
- 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
- Government
- 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 172N
- 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
- N739WS
- Operator
- Okeechobee Co Sheriff'S Office
- 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 collision with terrain/water
- 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
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Okeechobee, FL, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
THE FLIGHT WAS CONDUCTING AN AERIAL RECONNAISSANCE LOOKING FOR 2 MISSING FISHERMEN ON LAKE OKEECHOBEE. WHILE DESCENDING TO 125 FT AGL, A BOAT WAS SPOTTED OFF THE LEFT WING. THE AIRPLANE TURNED TOWARDS THE BOAT DESCENDING WITH THE LANDING LIGHT ON. WHILE OVERFLYING THE BOAT, THE LANDING LIGHT WAS TURNED OFF AND THEN BACK ON. THE PILOT LATER STATED THE LIGHT ILLUMINATED WHAT APPEARED TO BE HAZE, WITH NO VISUAL SIGHTING OF THE WATER. THE AIRPLANE THEN COLLIDED WITH THE WATER AND NOSED OVER. WITNESSES STATED THAT THE NIGHT WAS VERY DARK WITH PATCHY GROUND FOG.
Probable cause
THE PILOT-IN-COMMAND'S FAILURE TO MAINTAIN ALTITUDE DURING A LOW PASS AT NIGHT. CONTRIBUTING FACTORS WERE THE PILOT'S LIKELY SPATIAL DISORIENTATION DUE TO THE LACK OF SURFACE VISUAL CLUES, THE DARK NIGHT CONDITIONS, AND THE PATCHY FOG CONDITIONS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA92GA024
- Event ID
- 20001212X18485
- Case number
- MIA92GA024
- 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: 715482aa9ce2e58ad3716031d7ca18aa2f5f3c00e72628dc18140933debdaf6b; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:37:51.818Z.