ATL84FA095 · Cessna 172RG
Mid Eastern Airways Cessna 172RG · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Washington, DC to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL84FA095
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172RG
- 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
- N5299U
- Operator
- Mid Eastern Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Washington, DCTo 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 encounter with weather
- 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, intentional
- Pilot in command › IFR procedure, not followed
- Pilot in command › Judgment, poor
- Pilot in command › Proper altitude, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
PRIOR TO DEPARTURE, THE PLT WAS TWICE ADVISED THAT THE DESTINATION WX WAS BELOW MOST USERS MINIMUMS. THE NON-INSTRUMENT RATED PLT THEN DEPARTED DULLES ARPT ON AN IFR FLT PLAN IN IMC. AFTER DEPARTURE, HE DID NOT FOLLOW ASSIGNED HEADINGS, & FOR A PERIOD OF ABOUT 30 MINS, RADIO COMMUNICATIONS WERE LOST. AFTER RADIO CONTACT WAS RE-ESTABLISHED, THE PLT WAS CONTINUOUSLY ADVISED THAT THE WEATHER AT HIS DESTINATION WAS BELOW MINIMUMS. THE PLT SUBSEQUENTLY STATED THAT HE WANTED TO PUT DOWN AT THE FIRST AVAILABLE ARPT. AGAIN, RADIO CONTACT WAS LOST UNTIL THE PLT REPORTED HE WAS FLYING INLAND TOWARD TRI-COUNTY ARPT IN AHOSKI, NC. THIS WAS THE LAST TRANSMISSION THAT WAS RECEIVED. THE PLT CHANGED HIS TRANSPONDER CODE TO 1200. THE ACFT SUBSEQUENTLY IMPACTED THE GROUND 1-1/2 MI SOUTH OF THE PLT'S ORIGINAL DESTINATION ARPT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL84FA095
- Event ID
- 20001214X38694
- Case number
- ATL84FA095
- 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: 3e52758d200e4c4c3d9061754ddb968f7b6611c79aff97316c599db255ed2273; retrieved 2026-09-21T05:39:58.689Z.