IAD02FA088 · Cessna 172N
Albemarle Flight School Cessna 172N · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From Charlottesville Albemarle Airport (CHO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD02FA088
- 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
- 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
- N738JR
- Operator
- Albemarle Flight School
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Charlottesville Albemarle Airport (CHO), Charlottesville, VATo 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 · descent
- 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
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed on a local, night pleasure flight. A review of radar data revealed that the airplane headed north-northwest from the airport, towards mountainous terrain. The airplane crossed over a ridge, then maneuvered along its northwestern edge before turning southeast. The airplane proceeded on the southeasterly heading for several minutes, then crossed back over the mountain ridge in a shallow descent before the data ended. The airplane came to rest in heavily wooded terrain approximately 25 feet below a 3,375-foot mountain peak. Examination of the airplane and engine revealed no mechanical anomalies. Examination of the pilot's logbook revealed that he had recently completed 2.8 hours of flight instruction, of which, 1.5 hours were at night, after not having flown for almost two years. In addition, the pilot had not logged any solo flight time in almost 13 years prior to the accident. Weather, reported about the time of the accident at an airport 12.7 nautical miles to the south, about 2,700 feet below the accident site elevation, included winds from 240 degrees at 3 knots, visibility 6 statute miles, mist, and clear skies. The moon was 86% illuminated, 26 degrees above the horizon.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain sufficient altitude/clearance while descending over mountainous terrain. A factor was the night lighting conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD02FA088
- Event ID
- 20020906X01544
- Case number
- IAD02FA088
- 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 2002-08-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ac3c2e184e766ba5cadbc29beb43be34ef32cb53c9dc0c8873eb7c668aa616a5; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:54:07.226Z.