MIA89FA090 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Tupelo Regional Airport (TUP) to MO1 · Memphis, TN
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA89FA090
- 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 172
- 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
- N3937F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tupelo Regional Airport (TUP), Tupelo, MSTo MO1 · Memphis, TN
- 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 › Flight into known adverse weather, attempted
- 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
THE NON-INST RATED PLT & HIS WIFE LANDED SHORT OF THEIR DEST DUE TO ADVERSE WX DURING DAYLIGHT HRS. HE ELECTED TO CONTINUE THE FLT AFTER DARK IN WORSENING WX IN SPITE OF BEING ADVISED BY A PLT WHO HAD JUST FLOWN THE ROUTE THAT THE WX WAS NOT GOOD & THE WIFE BEGGING HIM NOT TO CONTINUE. THE WRECKAGE WAS LOCATED 2 DAYS LATER WHERE IT HAD CRASHED IN A STEEP NOSE DOWN ATTITUDE INTO A SPARSELY POPULATED, RURAL, WOODED AREA. A WITNESS LOCATED ABOUT 9 MILES FROM THE CRASH SITE HAD OBSERVED AN ACFT FLYING AT ABOUT 200 FEET IN THE DIRECTION OF THE CRASH SITE, ALONG HWY 78, AT ABOUT THE TIME OF THE ACCIDENT. THE PLT HAD LESS THAN 1 HR SIMULATED INSTRUMENT FLT TIME & NONE SINCE HE TOOK HIS PVT FLT TEST ABOUT 18 MONTHS PRIOR TO THE ACCIDENT.
Probable cause
THE CONTINUATION OF A VFR FLIGHT INTO NIGHT, INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS AND THE SPATIAL DISORIENTATION OF THE NON-INSTRUMENT RATED PILOT. CONTRIBUTING TO THE ACCIDENT WERE THE ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS AND THE OVERCONFIDENCE OF THE PILOT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA89FA090
- Event ID
- 20001213X27759
- Case number
- MIA89FA090
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1989-02-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 241bf85bcc28398e8dd9adb17c158324f7694b5be58b1d37331fb1843338c0bb; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:24:01.981Z.