FTW00FA268 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Easterwood Field (CLL) to Arlington Municipal Airport (GKY)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW00FA268
- 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 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
- N5357M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Easterwood Field (CLL), College Station, TXTo Arlington Municipal Airport (GKY), Arlington, 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
- 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
- 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 pilot received two standard weather briefings for a VFR flight from Houston, Texas to Arlington, Texas. Both briefers informed the pilot that VFR flight was not recommended near Arlington; however, VFR flight would be possible to Waco, Texas. The pilot stated during both briefings that he needed to try and make it to Arlington. The flight departed Houston and diverted to College Station, Texas, due to weather. The flight remained on the ground in College Station for eight hours, during which time the pilot received three weather briefings. During the briefings, the weather briefers attempted to discourage the pilot from attempting the flight due to the en route weather. The pilot again indicated a need to reach his destination by the following morning and, subsequently, filed an IFR flight plan. The flight departed into dark night instrument meteorological conditions and 17 minutes later, the pilot reported to air traffic control (ATC) that the vacuum pump had failed. ATC provided the pilot with radar vectors back to the airport, during which time the pilot indicated that he was having trouble maintaining heading and altitude. Subsequently, ATC commenced a no gyro approach with the pilot. Seven minutes later, the airplane disappeared from radar. Search and rescue was initiated and the airplane was located in a pasture. Examination of the accident site revealed that the airplane impacted the ground in a near vertical nose down attitude. The pilot was issued an instrument rating on August 18, 2000. He had accumulated a total of 30.4 hours of simulated instrument flight time and 2.5 hours of actual instrument flight time. Examination of the airplane revealed no anomalies that would prevent normal operation of the aircraft. The vacuum pump drive shaft was found intact. Rotational scoring was found on components of the attitude indicator, heading indicator and turn and slip indicator.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane due to spatial disorientation. Contributory factors were the clouds, dark night light conditions, the pilot's lack of total instrument flight time, and the pilot's self-induced pressure to complete the flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW00FA268
- Event ID
- 20001212X21967
- Case number
- FTW00FA268
- 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: db1e08e124466436ec508115d5b603f216676e24d85d1b4feed5e219f65ca918; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:51:54.659Z.