FTW89FA090 · Cessna 172P
Cessna 172P · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From San Angelo Regional Mathis Field (SJT) to F60 · McGregor, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW89FA090
- 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 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
- N5253K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Angelo Regional Mathis Field (SJT), San Angelo, TXTo F60 · McGregor, TX
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- 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-INSTRUMENT RATED PILOT WAS ADVISED BEFORE DEPARTING ON A CROSS COUNTRY FLIGHT THAT VFR FLIGHT WAS NOT RECOMMENDED. HE DEPARTED WITHOUT FILING A FLIGHT PLAN. BEFORE REACHING AN INTERMEDIATE STOP, HE OBTAINED AN UPDATED WEATHER BRIEFING FOR THE LOCAL AREA AND HIS FINAL DESTINATION. AFTER REFUELING, HE TOOK OFF AND PROCEEDED TOWARD HIS DESTINATION WHICH WAS APRX 156 NM TO THE EAST. A LARGE SLOW MOVING FRONTAL SYSTEM WAS POSITIONED OVER NORTHCENTRAL TEXAS AT THE TIME. THE PILOT'S ROUTE OF FLIGHT WAS ALONG THE SOUTHERN BOUNDARY OF THE FRONT. LIGHT DRIZZLE, FOG, AND LOW CEILINGS EXISTED ALONG THE ROUTE OF FLIGHT. SUBSEQUENTLY, THE AIRPLANE ENTERED A DESCENT & CRASHED APRX 63 MI SOUTHWEST OF THE DESTINATION AIRPORT AFTER ABOUT 3 HRS & 20 MINUTES OF FLIGHT. NO PREIMPACT PART FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION OF THE AIRPLANE WAS FOUND, THOUGH IT WAS BADLY DAMAGED DURING IMPACT. SEVERAL LOCAL PEOPLE STATED THERE WAS LOW CEILINGS, FOG AND DRIZZLE AT THE TIME OF THE ACCIDENT.
Probable cause
CONTINUED VFR FLIGHT BY THE PILOT INTO INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS (IMC), AND HIS FAILURE TO MAINTAIN CONTROL OF THE AIRCRAFT, DUE TO SPATIAL DISORIENTATION. FACTORS RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: THE ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS AND THE PILOT'S LACK OF INSTRUMENT EXPERIENCE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW89FA090
- Event ID
- 20001213X28314
- Case number
- FTW89FA090
- 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: f7304f3f96b23b6e868944b861360ebf1796498e6e141108b27fcf75f9a14574; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:20:15.787Z.