CHI00FA123 · Cessna 177RG
Cessna 177RG · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Sioux Falls Regional Airport (FSD) to Watertown Regional Airport (ATY)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00FA123
- 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 177RG
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N1978Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sioux Falls Regional Airport (FSD), Sioux Falls, SDTo Watertown Regional Airport (ATY)
- 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
- 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
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane impacted the water in about a 60 degree nose down attitude. The flight occurred during marginal VFR weather at night. The pilot had made an unscheduled landing and obtained a weather brief and filed an IFR flight plan. VFR flight was not recommended. About 30 minutes prior to the accident, ATC instructed the pilot to descend at pilot's discretion to 4,000 feet and report the airport in sight for a visual approach. The pilot acknowledged the instructions and descended to 4,000 feet. The pilot made no further transmissions. Radar contact was lost about 11 nautical miles south of the airport at 3,800 feet msl. The pilot had a total of about 12 hours of actual instrument time and a total of about 50 hours of night time. At 2153, the weather was: Winds 200 at 8 knots, 10 miles visibility, light rain showers, few clouds at 1,000 feet, broken at 1,800 feet, overcast at 6,000 feet, temperature 52 degrees F, dew point 50 degrees F, altimeter 29.95. The wreckage path covered a distance of approximately 310 feet, oriented to the north, and in two to three feet of water. The inspection of the airplane revealed no pre-existing anomalies.
Probable cause
the pilot failed to maintain aircraft control due to spatial disorientation. Factors relating to the accident were the dark night, clouds, and rain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00FA123
- Event ID
- 20001212X20770
- Case number
- CHI00FA123
- 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 2000-04-27.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ac5ae15bab01246252ecee63b15d9c95a8932a57f4b116e643f006ec7e03b9ea; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:17:14.149Z.