FTW90LA049 · Cessna 172E
Cessna 172E · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Tuscaloosa National Airport (TCL) to Lakefront Airport (NEW)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW90LA049
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172E
- 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
- N3531S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tuscaloosa National Airport (TCL), Tuscaloosa, ALTo Lakefront Airport (NEW), New Orleans, LA
- 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 · 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 encounter with weather
- 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
- Fuel exhaustion; 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
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, continued
- Pilot in command › Procedures/directives, disregarded
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Hammond, LA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
THE STUDENT PILOT RECEIVED TWO WEATHER BRIEFINGS DURING WHICH HE WAS TOLD AT FIRST THAT HIS ROUTE OF FLIGHT WAS MARGINAL VFR AND LATER THAT IT HAD GONE IFR. IN BOTH CASES, HE WAS TOLD THAT VFR WAS NOT RECOMMENDED. IN A POST-ACCIDENT INTERVIEW THE PILOT STATED THAT MARGINAL WEATHER DID NOT BOTHER HIM AND THAT HE KNEW 'HOW TO FLY IN THE CLOUDS'. ABOUT 2:10 AFTER DEPARTURE, THE PILOT CONTACTED NEW ORLEANS APPROACH CONTROL AND REQUESTED ASSISTANCE IN GETTING TO HIS DESTINATION AIRPORT. HE WAS TOLD THAT ALL OF THE AIRPORTS IN THE AREA WERE IFR. DURING THE NEXT 1:38 CONTROLLER ATTEMPTED TO VECTOR THE PILOT TO AIRPORTS IN THE AREA IN ATTEMPTS TO GET THE AIRPLANE DOWN. ANOTHER AIRPLANE ASSISTED IN THESE EFFORTS, BUT IN EACH CASE, THE PILOT WAS UNABLE TO LOCATE THE AIRPORTS DUE TO THE THICK UNDERCAST CONDITIONS. WHILE BEING VECTORED FOR AN ILS, THE PILOT REPORTED THAT HIS ENGINE QUIT DUE TO FUEL EXHAUSTION. HE WAS UNABLE TO GLIDE TO THE AIRPORT AND CRASHED INTO TREES ABOUT 8 MILES SHORT.
Probable cause
PILOT IN COMMAND'S INITIATION AND CONTINUATION OF THE FLIGHT INTO AN AREA OF KNOWN IMC WEATHER CONDITIONS AND HIS SUBSEQUENT INABILITY TO LAND PRIOR TO RUNNING OUT OF FUEL. CONTRIBUTING FACTORS TO THE ACCIDENT WERE THE PILOT'S FAILURE TO EXERCISE GOOD JUDGEMENT AND HIS DISREGARD FOR THE FEDERAL AIR REGULATIONS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW90LA049
- Event ID
- 20001212X22418
- Case number
- FTW90LA049
- 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: 1dce3b945f659507ab116fa9cb67e0061c3732f67b2206b07696e6ff4a9e6de8; retrieved 2026-09-21T23:58:22.755Z.