NYC88LA079 · Cessna 172P
East Hampton Aire Cessna 172P · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From East Hampton, NY to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC88LA079
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172P
- 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
- N52535
- Operator
- East Hampton Aire
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From East Hampton, NYTo not recorded
- 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 collision with object
- 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
- Object › Bird(s)
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE FLIGHT DEPARTED EAST HAMPTON AIRPORT FOR A PLEASURE FLT. SHORTLY THEREAFTER, THE PILOT CALLED ON FREQUENCY 122.7 STATING THAT HE HAD STRUCK SOME BIRDS AND COULD NOT MAINTAIN CONTROL OF THE AIRCRAFT. THERE AS NO FURTHER TRANSMISSION AS TO HIS LOCATION, AND THE AIRCRAFT CRASHED IN THE OCEAN. THE PILOT IS PRESUMED FATAL. THE ONLY PART OF THE ACFT RECOVERED TO DATE IS THE HEAD REST. A BOAT IN THE AREA HAD HOOKED ON TO THE TAIL OF THE ACFT BUT COULD NOT HOLD IT. THE RESCUE EFFORT WAS DISCONTINUED DUE TO BAD WX. DIVERS REPORTED UNDERWATER VISIBILITY AS ZERO. THE ACFT CRASHED ABOUT 1 MILE OFFSHORE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC88LA079
- Event ID
- 20001213X25150
- Case number
- NYC88LA079
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: 2719488263af139b21489d702e90685c0712138716094756113122f625ebca0f; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:49:03.519Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure. The narrative states "THE FLIGHT DEPARTED EAST HAMPTON AIRPORT FOR A PLEASURE FLT" and the airplane crashed in the ocean about 1 mile offshore; the departure was not recorded.