MIA86FA053 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From X47 · Bunnell, FL to Waycross Ware County Airport (AYS)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA86FA053
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172M
- 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
- N21760
- Operator
- Lewis R. Davis · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From X47 · Bunnell, FLTo Waycross Ware County Airport (AYS), Waycross, GA
- 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); Tree(s)
- 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 › VFR flight into imc, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
DRG A NGT X-COUNTRY FLT, THE NON-INSTRUMENT RATED PLT CONTACTED APCH CONTROL & RPRTD HE WAS 'SORT OF LOST IN THE FOG.' HE OBTAINED WX INFO & ELECTED TO DIVERT TO WAYCROSS, GA. SHORTLY THEREAFTER, THE ACFT COLLIDED WITH TREES ON UNEVEN TERRAIN & CRASHED. WITNESSES STATED THAT THEY HEARD THE ACFT CIRCLE TWICE & CRASH. NO PREIMPACT PART FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION OF THE ACFT OR ENG WAS FOUND. ABOUT 28 MI SOUTH AT JACKSONVILLE, FL, THE 1949 EST WX WAS IN PART: 600' BROKEN, 1500' OVERCAST, VIS 7 MI, WIND FROM 060 DEG AT 12 KTS. WITNESSES RPRTD PATCHY FOG IN THE AREA OF THE ACDNT. TOXICOLOGY CHECKS OF TISSUE FROM THE PLT REVEALED THE PRESENCE OF BENZODIAZEPINE (VALIUM) & PROPOXYPHENE (DARVON). INTERVIEWS WITH THE PLT'S WIFE & AN AVIATION MEDICAL EXAMINER REVEALED THE PLT HAD USED THESE MEDICATIONS FOR ARTHRITIS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA86FA053
- Event ID
- 20010110X00213
- Case number
- MIA86FA053
- 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 1986-01-02.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 15be246dde34d41cb1d3ec9d42e7400f5ac01be498be159f284637f03fbd49ca; retrieved 2026-09-21T04:43:04.070Z.