NYC00FA058 · Cessna 172P
Cessna 172P and Cessna 172R · Accident: midair collision on approach
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC00FA058
- 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
Aircraft 1 · Cessna 172P
- 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
- N96273
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fitchburg Municipal Airport (FIT), Fitchburg, MATo 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 final
- 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
- Midair collision
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Aircraft 2 · Cessna 172R
- 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
- N672DW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Nashua Airport / Boire Field (ASH), Nashua, NHTo Fitchburg Municipal Airport (FIT), Fitchburg, MA
- 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 final
- 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
- Midair collision
- 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 › Visual lookout, not performed
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Leominster, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was conducting landings in a left traffic pattern to Runway 32, and the student pilot was inbound on an instructional solo flight. The student pilot called that he was 4 miles north-northeast of the airport, and shortly thereafter, the private pilot called his downwind leg. The private pilot's airplane completed the downwind leg, then turned onto base, then onto final. On final, the student pilot's airplane overtook it, and then collided with it. The propeller from student pilot's airplane cut through the top of its right wing, and the left strut from the student pilot's airplane impacted its right fuselage. The two airplanes locked together, then made a slow, approximately 160-degree turn while descending rapidly to the ground, about 2,000 feet from the approach end of runway. The airport did not have an operating control tower, and turns in the traffic pattern were to the left. At the time of the collision, the sun was about 90 degrees to the left of the airplanes, about 12 degrees above the horizon.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to see and avoid the private pilot's airplane. Factors included the student pilot's non-standard traffic pattern entry, the private pilot's failure to check for other traffic before turning onto final, and the position of the sun at the time of the accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC00FA058
- Event ID
- 20001212X20303
- Case number
- NYC00FA058
- 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: f7a6dcc9c7342f6d98d1ba9ce2d9bdf5a96490c953f9802027206f6cfbd11014; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:34:06.255Z.