BFO90FA054 · Cessna 172RG
Kentucky Airmotive Cessna 172RG · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From IAD · Washington, DC to 013 · MT STERLING, KY
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO90FA054
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172RG
- 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
- N5117U
- Operator
- Kentucky Airmotive
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From IAD · Washington, DCTo 013 · MT STERLING, KY
- 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 › Altitude, inadequate
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, inadvertent
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Onego, WV, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT WAS ON A VFR FLIGHT, WHEN THE AIRPLANE COLLIDED WITH MOUNTAINOUS TERRAIN AT AN ELEVATION OF ABOUT 4300 FEET. ABOUT 21 MILES WEST AT ELKIN, WEST VIRGINIA, ELEVATION 1987 FT, THE 1251 EDT WEATHER WAS IN PART; 2000 FT OVERCAST, VISIBILITY 9 MILES, TEMPERATURE 50 DEGREES, DEW POINT 43 DEGREES, WIND FROM 310 DEGREES AT 10 KTS. WITNESSES IN THE AREA REPORTED THE MOUNTAIN TOPS WERE OBSCURED IN CLOUDS AT THE TIME. THE INVESTIGATION DID NOT DISCLOSE EVIDENCE OF MECHANICAL MALFUNCTION.
Probable cause
VFR FLIGHT BY THE PILOT INTO INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS (IMC), AND HIS FAILURE TO MAINTAIN ADEQUATE CLEARANCE (ALTITUDE) FROM MOUNTAINOUS TERRAIN. THE TERRAIN AND ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS WERE RELATED FACTORS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO90FA054
- Event ID
- 20001212X23334
- Case number
- BFO90FA054
- 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: 8c78ffa57bcfdd59b178a23b1f6a969529a30da333d6fd9c55a2aa80046a2b90; retrieved 2026-09-21T02:37:12.620Z.