CHI01FA130 · Cessna 172N
Sabris Cessna 172N · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From 3KM · Wichita, KS to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI01FA130
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 172N
- 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
- N733RK
- Operator
- Sabris
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 3KM · Wichita, KSTo 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 collision with object
- 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
- Wire, static
- 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
- Dual student › Clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was observed flying low in the vicinity of the Wichita International Raceway, Wichita, Kansas. One witness reported hearing two blasts like a shotgun. The witness said he and his friends drove over to where they thought the sound had come from. They found the airplane lying on the guard rail of the racetrack totally on fire. Another witness working in his yard just north of the racetrack said he heard the sound of a small airplane, stopped what he was doing and searched to gain sight of the airplane. He said that he had a clear view of the airplane. It was traveling north-northwest at an altitude of 150 to 200 feet and descending slightly. The witness said the engine speed was very high, but sounded normal, and the flaps were up. The witness watched the airplane until he lost sight of it behind some trees. "About the time I lost visual contact … I heard the metallic sound and noticed that all the power wires (east and west) were bouncing." The witness said he ran into the house to call 9-1-1, but the phones were dead and there was no power to the house. An examination of the accident site revealed damage to a tower support cable pole atop a 110-foot tall power line support tower. The north side 3/4-inch diameter support cable was observed draped through trees northeast of the tower and ran north-northeast to the airplane main wreckage. The cable ran through the airplane's empennage and on to the racetrack. One broken end of the cable was on the racetrack south of the airplane. The top 8 inches of the airplane's vertical stabilizer and rudder was located 15 feet east of the racetrack beneath the power lines. A 3/4-inch diameter c-shaped indention ran horizontally along the right side of the piece. An examination of the remainder of the airplane revealed no anomalies. The airplane's owner said that flight instructors were using the racetrack as a practice strip to set up and practice emergency landings.
Probable cause
the student pilot not maintaining clearance from the tower support wire during the practice emergency landing maneuver and the instructor pilot's inadequate supervision of the student pilot. Factors relating to the accident were the static wire and the low altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI01FA130
- Event ID
- 20010510X00923
- Case number
- CHI01FA130
- 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: 0961d29573907862126226de675a328addd79694b07b638641979b23fdff286e; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:34:04.455Z.