NYC00FA112 · Cessna 172H
Cessna 172H · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Williamsburg Jamestown Airport (JGG) to Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport (SHD)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC00FA112
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172H
- 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
- N1404F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Williamsburg Jamestown Airport (JGG), Williamsburg, VATo Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport (SHD), Weyers Cave, VA
- 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
- En route · descent
- 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
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was on an instrument flight rules flight plan, in instrument meteorological conditions. He was instructed to fly a heading, until receiving a non-directional beacon, then proceed directly to the beacon. After the pilot reported receiving the beacon, the airplane turned to right, about 90 degrees, followed by a 180-degree turn to the left. At the completion of the second turn, the airplane disappeared from radar. There were no distress calls from the pilot. The ground impact point was found in the vicinity of the last radar contact, and accident site evidence indicated an almost vertical, final descent. All flight control surfaces were accounted for at the accident scene, and propeller signatures indicated high engine power at impact. The vacuum pump was destroyed, but internally, exhibited rotational scoring and rotational smudging. The pilot had 254 hours of total flight time, with 53 hours of simulated instrument flight time, and 0.4 hours of actual instrument flight time. The pilot's last simulated instrument flight experience occurred 4 months prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of control of the airplane in instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in an inadvertent stall/spin. Factors included the pilot's lack of instrument time under actual conditions, and his lack of recent instrument flight experience.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC00FA112
- Event ID
- 20001212X20891
- Case number
- NYC00FA112
- 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: 7e3dea605012423d168ad60b6271014aaa16f47a101d164d011aea233d00c179; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:20:07.124Z.