ATL03LA028 · Cessna 172F
Cessna 172F · Accident: in flight encounter with weather on approach
From Daytona Beach International Airport (DAB) to 64X · Stuart, FL
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL03LA028
- 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
- 0 · 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 172F
- 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
- N5338R
- Operator
- Christopher S. Flom · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Daytona Beach International Airport (DAB), Daytona Beach, FLTo 64X · Stuart, FL
- 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 final
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Weather condition › Windshear
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot conducted a visual approach to runway 18. The flight instructor stated a wind shear or gust condition was encountered about 25 feet above the ground over the runway, and the airplane rapidly lost airspeed and sank suddenly. The flight instructor took control of the airplane and added full power. The airplane continued to sink, and the flight instructor stated the left wing was pushed down. The airplane banked left and struck trees about 10 to 20 feet off the side of the runway. The flight instructor reported no mechanical malfunction or failure.
Probable cause
The pilot's inflight encounter with wind shear on final approach, which resulted in an inflight loss of control and subequent uncontrolled descent into trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL03LA028
- Event ID
- 20030106X00014
- Case number
- ATL03LA028
- 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: ca3460d7abc28166fc2bd94044b16b30f536418724f61291b01938de85f59867; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:44:54.087Z.