DEN00FA067 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Roswell Air Center Airport (ROW) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN00FA067
- 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
- N6251B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Roswell Air Center Airport (ROW)To 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
- 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
- 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
- Stall/spin
- 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 › Stall/spin, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The solo instructional flight departed the airport northbound and climbed to 1,500 feet agl. Radar data indicates that the student pilot flew by her home, and the airplane slowed from approximately 95 knots to 47 knots ground speed (the headwind was estimated to be 6 to 8 knots). The airplane's stall speed was 48 knots. The airplane accelerated back to approximately 95 knots and turned southeast bound. As the pilot passed her home the second time, she again slowed the airplane to 47 knots ground speed (her estimated tail wind was 2 to 6 knots). Radar data indicates that the airplane then turned left and began to descend at approximately 4,500 fpm. Witnesses reported seeing the airplane flying eastbound, wings level, and descending to between 75 to 150 feet agl. One witness said he did not remember hearing any engine noise. Then he saw 'the left wing dip very rapidly, and the plane became almost vertical.' At the same time, he remembers hearing the airplane's engine 'really power up.' Toxicological reports indicate that the student pilot had four times the maximum recommended concentration of the drug sertraline (trade name Zoloft) in her. Zoloft is a prescription antidepressant, and is not approved by the FAA for pilots to take while on flight status.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control and the subsequent inadvertent stall/spin. A factor was the pilot's diverted attention to over flying her residence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN00FA067
- Event ID
- 20001212X20610
- Case number
- DEN00FA067
- 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: 63df24bc284430ee7d608892d43578faecf5c6eeafe729d147a946d19ba8c661; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:23:28.459Z.