IAD02FA037 · Cessna 172P
Cessna 172P · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Bay Bridge Airport (W29) to Osvaldo Vieira International Airport (OXB)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD02FA037
- 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
- 4 · 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 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
- N96811
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bay Bridge Airport (W29), Stevensville, MDTo Osvaldo Vieira International Airport (OXB), Ocean City
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern turn to base
- 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
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was over water, making a night VFR approach to a coastal airport. Witnesses observed it suddenly transition from horizontal flight, to a vertical descent into the ocean. According to a witness flying in the area at the time, the accident airplane went over a "black hole," and he saw "strobe over strobe" before it disappeared. The witness also noted that disorientation around the airport at night was common because of the ocean. The accident occurred on a clear, dark night, with no illumination from the moon. Examination of the airframe, systems, avionics, and engine did not reveal any evidence of a pre-impact mechanical malfunction. Post-accident examination of the wreckage revealed that the left wing leading edge was crushed aft, to the wing spar. The pilot was not instrument-rated, but had received instrument training under a hood in VFR conditions.
Probable cause
The pilot's spatial disorientation, which resulted in his subsequent loss of control of the airplane. A factor was the dark night, over water visual conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD02FA037
- Event ID
- 20020409X00476
- Case number
- IAD02FA037
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2002-03-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: bffa3f2b25f7cf71ebee8912020aa4a5c06e2eb52438eec72347154c2f580875; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:08:30.563Z.