IAD00LA043 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Hummel Field (W75) to W79
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD00LA043
- 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
- 0 · 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 172N
- 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
- N1655E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hummel Field (W75), Saluda, VATo W79
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Wire, static
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Incapacitation(loss of consciousness)
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot was on a cross-country solo flight and entered the downwind leg of the traffic pattern for landing on Runway 20. He said he turned onto the final leg of the traffic pattern and established the airplane on a stabilized approach for the runway. The student pilot said that just prior to landing he 'blacked out' and lost consciousness. The student pilot said that he awoke when the airplane hit the ground. The airplane banked to the right, cleared a fence, but struck a power line and a trailer where it came to rest. A firefighter who witnessed the accident and assisted the student pilot said, 'The first thing he told me was that he blacked out.' The student pilot remained in the hospital for two days undergoing tests. He reported that he was not taking any medication prior to the accident, and that he had no pre-existing medical condition that would explain his loss of consciousness. The pilot reported there were no mechanical deficiencies with the airplane, and examination of the engine's exhaust system revealed no leaks or mechanical faults.
Probable cause
the pilots's inability to maintain aircraft control after a loss of consciosness.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD00LA043
- Event ID
- 20001212X21020
- Case number
- IAD00LA043
- 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: 3fa8c65ea72e8d854d72404428f57767740ae4c2b3590e657f4513f27e5dbbd5; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:13:56.035Z.