NYC90FA099 · Grumman AA-5B
Grumman AA-5B · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From PS97 · SIGEL, PA to Pottstown Municipal Airport (N47)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC90FA099
- 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
Grumman AA-5B
- Aircraft type
- Grumman AA-5
- 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
- N74312
- Operator
- Joseph W. Davis · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From PS97 · SIGEL, PATo Pottstown Municipal Airport (N47), POTTSTOWN,, PA
- 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
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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 › Lack of total instrument time
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A NON-INSTRUMENT RATED PRIVATE PILOT DEPARTED ON A SOLO CROSS-COUNTRY FLIGHT WITHOUT FILING A FLIGHT PLAN OR OBTAINING AN FAA WEATHER BRIEFING. DURING FLIGHT, HE ENCOUNTERED DETERIORATING WEATHER CONDITIONS. SUBSEQUENTLY, THE AIRCRAFT CRASHED ON SPARCELY WOODED TERRAIN. IMPACT OCCURRED NEAR THE TOP OF A RIDGE AT AN ELEVATION OF ABOUT 1800 FT ON A HEADING OF ABOUT 150 DEG. THE AIRCRAFT WAS DESTROYED DURING IMPACT; WRECKAGE WAS CONFINED TO A SMALL AREA. A WITNESS OF THE WEATHER IN THE AREA ESTIMATED THE SKY CONDITION WAS ABOUT 300 FT OVERCAST. WEATHER AT THE ACCIDENT SITE WAS NOT VERIFIED.
Probable cause
CONTINUED VFR FLIGHT BY THE PILOT INTO INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS (IMC), AND HIS FAILURE (OR INABILITY) TO MAINTAIN CONTROL OF THE AIRCRAFT AFTER BECOMING SPATIALLY DISORIENTED. FACTORS RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS, AND THE PILOT'S LACK OF INSTRUMENT EXPERIENCE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC90FA099
- Event ID
- 20001212X23008
- Case number
- NYC90FA099
- 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: 52e93a0698bce4ce47f1d739c2253177fc6a3cadaf79c6ef8292d267d1afd86b; retrieved 2026-09-21T02:44:51.281Z.