DEN00FA119 · Cessna 172H
Cessna 172H · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From Angel Fire Airport (AXX) to Buffalo Airport (1E7)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN00FA119
- 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
- 2 · 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 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
- N2526L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Angel Fire Airport (AXX)To Buffalo Airport (1E7), Amarillo, TX
- 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 · climb to cruise
- 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 object
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Altitude, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Climb, premature
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane took off and made two complete climbing circuits of the airport before proceeding south towards rising terrain. A lineman said he 'could tell they were having trouble gaining altitude,' and watched as the airplane disappeared behind trees south of town near a golf course. A witness said the airplane came over his house at low altitude, clipped trees, spun around, hit the roadway, and caught fire. The accident site was 4.2 miles south of the airport. The difference between the accident site elevation and the airport elevation is 353 feet. Density altitude was calculated at 11,197 feet msl. The airplane weighed an estimated 1,987 pounds.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper inflight decision to prematurely attempt a climb towards rising terrain before sufficient altitude had been attained that would assure adequate obstacle clearance. Factors were high density altitude and trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN00FA119
- Event ID
- 20001212X21201
- Case number
- DEN00FA119
- 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 2000-06-26.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a93bc1405768ebf3299eda6fb6783634294d50a916ae9f0688e9dd735d7c1a02; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:06:54.703Z.