FTW00FA063 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Bill & Hillary Clinton National Airport/Adams Field (LIT) to Carlisle Municipal Airport (4M3)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW00FA063
- 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
- N95552
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bill & Hillary Clinton National Airport/Adams Field (LIT), Little Rock, ARTo Carlisle Municipal Airport (4M3), AR
- 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
- 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
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot had accrued approximately 46 hours of flight time and was to fly 1.5 hours solo to practice landings at a nearby airport. A review of available radar data indicated that the airplane departed on an easterly heading, climbed to an altitude of 3,200 feet msl, and established a varying ground speed of 84 to 94 knots. Radar data indicated that following two 180-degree turns, the airplane was at 3,300 feet msl, heading 089 degrees, with a ground speed of 49 knots. After 2 minutes and 51 seconds, the altitude started decreasing. Radar contact was lost at an altitude of 1,600 feet msl. A witness observed the airplane descending straight down with no rotation, and he watched it until it went out of view behind some trees. This witness could see the bottom of the airplane's wings and fuselage, and thought that it was a model airplane until he saw black smoke rising from behind the trees. An examination of the accident site revealed that the airplane impacted on the top of a levee, and the engine was found embedded 4.5 feet in the ground within the initial impact crater. No anomalies were found with the airframe or engine that would have prevented normal operation.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW00FA063
- Event ID
- 20001212X20355
- Case number
- FTW00FA063
- 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: 63d564d0d396e22ac406e70705373dddd7c04ae518b625350eafa5ce74e70013; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:30:22.477Z.