NYC88FA236 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Westerly State Airport (WST) to 5B5 · Bennington, VT
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC88FA236
- 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 172N
- 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
- N6586J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Westerly State Airport (WST), Westerly, RITo 5B5 · Bennington, VT
- 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
- Atc personnel(artcc) › Artcc service, inadequate
- Atc personnel(artcc) › Instructions, written/verbal, inadequate
- Atc personnel(supervisor) › Supervision, inadequate
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
- Procedure inadequate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Adams, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
DRG VFR FLT, N6586J ENCTRD WX, BGN CIRCLING HAY FLD FOR EMERG LNDG & MADE DISTRESS CALL ON EMERG FREQ 121.5 MHZ. N6586J WAS TOO LOW TO CTC ATC FACILITIES, BUT MONARCH FLT 58 (BOEING 757) HEARD THE PLT CALL & OFFERED TO HELP. ALBANY APCH CTLRESPONDED ON SAME FREQ (121.5) & FLT 58 RELAYED INFO TO & FM N6586J. ALBANY CTLR PROVIDED INFO OF 3700' MTN PEAK IN VCNTY, BUT PLT OF FLT 58 DIDN'T RELAY TRRN ELEV TO N6586J, NOR DID THE CTLR NOTE THE ERROR. BOSTON ARTCC ESTAB RADAR CTCWITH N6586J & BGN RELAYING VECTORS, BUT CTLR THOUGHT PLT WAS PROVIDING HIS OWN TRRN SEPN, BECAUSE HE WAS VFR. THUS, THE CTLR ISSUED VECTOR BELOW MIN VECTORING ALT (MVA), WHICH WAS 4000' OR ABV. PLT ENCTRD IMC & RPRTD DSCNDG TO 2500' TO "TRYTO GET OUT OF THE CLOUDS." SUBSEQUENTLY, ACFT CRASHED ON MT FITCH. ATC HANDBOOK ALLOWED VECTORING OF VFR ACFT BELOW MVAWITH NO WARNING OF TRRN. ATC CTLRS DID NOT ADHERE TO EMERG PROCEDURES IN HANDBOOK. THE INVOLVED SUPVRS TOOK NO ACTION TOCORRECT THE SITUATION. INVOLVED CTLRS LACKED TRNG IN HANDLING EMERGENCIES CONCERNING VFR PLTS THAT ENCTR WX BELOW MVA.
Probable cause
PILOT'S INADEQUATE PREFLIGHT PLANNING AND IMPROPER INFLIGHT DECISIONS, HE CONTINUED VFR INTO IFR CONDITIONS. THE AIR ROUTE TRAFFIC CONTROL CENTER SERVICE WAS IMPROPER.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC88FA236
- Event ID
- 20001213X26907
- Case number
- NYC88FA236
- 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: e094fcbba71ac28ad5aedf96cf055c61f54c1a4c2d5253c94ad95ffdba6f1b93; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:33:49.566Z.