IAD03FA005 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Indy South Greenwood Airport (HFY) to Mount Sterling Montgomery County Airport (IOB)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD03FA005
- 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
- Instrument 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
- N6413J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Indy South Greenwood Airport (HFY), Greenwood, INTo Mount Sterling Montgomery County Airport (IOB), Mount Sterling, KY
- 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 · IFR final approach
- 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
- Tower (marked)
- 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 › IFR procedure, not followed
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 requested, and was approved for a GPS approach. He was issued an altimeter setting, but did not acknowledge it. Radar data revealed that the airplane passed about 1 mile to the right of an intermediate approach fix, and was nearing the abeam position, about 1/2 mile to the right of the final approach fix. At both positions, the airplane was about 300 feet below the minimum segment altitude. After passing the final approach fix, the controller advised the pilot that radar contact was lost and the pilot acknowledged the transmission. No further transmissions were received from the pilot. The airplane impacted a tower, slightly left of the approach course centerline, at an elevation of about 1,350 feet. The minimum descent altitude along that approach segment was 1,800 feet. The setting found on the altimeter would have placed the airplane about 100 feet lower than it should have been. A witness stated that minutes after the accident, he looked up at the tower to check for damage, and saw that the top of it was "just in the bottom of the clouds." The airplane was certified for IFR operation; however, it was not equipped with an IFR-certified GPS receiver. A personal, hand-held computer with an antenna and integrated GPS receiver was found at the accident site. The software vendor had posted a warning on its website, which stated, "The system is not tested or approved by the FAA or any governmental agency and should not be used as a primary flight instrument."
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to follow the published instrument approach procedure, which resulted in an early descent into an antenna tower. A factor was the low ceiling.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD03FA005
- Event ID
- 20021023X05372
- Case number
- IAD03FA005
- 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, coordinates. 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: c8355bf216c82baeb8f07d97352dfbe8dcdec1b255da7f6db9f93556a3fa27ed; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:43:57.722Z.