BFO89FA020 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of control in flight
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO89FA020
- 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
- Unknown
Cessna 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N24236
- Operator
- Ervin S. Miller · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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
- Unknown
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE ACFT WAS OWNED & PILOTED BY A NON-CERTIFICATED PLT WITH TERMINAL CANCER, WHO WAS NOT ELIGIBLE FOR AN FAA MED CERT. WORKERS SAW THE ACFT TAKEOFF AT APRX 1030 EST. ABOUT 1 HR LATER, A NEARBY RESIDENT HEARD WHAT SHE BELIEVED WAS AN ENG 'MISSING' & WENT 'OUTSIDE,' BUT DID NOT SEE ANYTHING. SHE WENT BACK 'INSIDE' & HEARD A LOUD NOISE (BELIEVED TO BE THE THE ACFT CRASHING). SHE WENT 'OUTSIDE' AGAIN, BUT STILL DID NOT SEE ANYTHING. SOON THEREAFTER, THE ACFT WAS OBSERVED WHERE IT HAD CRASHED BESIDE THE APCH END OF RWY 36 AT THE PLT'S PVT STRIP. THERE WAS EVIDENCE IT HAD CRASHED IN A STEEP NOSE DOWN, WINGS LEVEL ATTITUDE. THE ACFT WAS EXTENSIVELY DAMAGED DRG IMPACT. NO PREIMPACT PART FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION OF THE ACFT OR ENG WAS FOUND. ABOUT 20 MI SE AT DOVER AFB, THE WX WAS IN PART: 500' SCATTERED, 900' BROKEN, VIS 2 MI WITH FOG & RAIN. FREEZING RAIN & SNW BGN FALLING SHORTLY AFTER THE ACDNT. THE PLT'S BROTHER BELIEVED THE ACFT ICED UP. THE OWNER/PLT WAS SUFFERING FM THE END STAGE OF LARYNX CANCER WITH COMPLICATIONS OF ANEMIA & HEMOPTYSIS.
Probable cause
LOSS OF AIRCRAFT CONTROL FOR UNKNOWN REASONS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO89FA020
- Event ID
- 20001213X27848
- Case number
- BFO89FA020
- 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: e9de2783d5069db00b5fcd9265110a7d5b87126e77557b81a6a15dadf7c1cb2a; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:23:23.484Z.