FTW04LA026 · Cessna 172N
Voyager Air Center Cessna 172N · Accident en route
From North Texas Regional Airport Perrin Field (GYI) to New Braunfels National Airport (BAZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW04LA026
- 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 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
- N739YK
- Operator
- Voyager Air Center
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Texas Regional Airport Perrin Field (GYI), Grayson County, TXTo New Braunfels National Airport (BAZ), New Braunfels, TX
- 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 · cruise
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Pilot in command › Became lost/disoriented, inadvertent
- Pilot in command › VFR procedures, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While in cruise flight during a day VFR cross-country, the pilot became disoriented and executed a precautionary landing to an open field. According to the pilot, he received a weather briefing from FSS prior to his 3 hour and 50 minute cross-country flight. The FSS briefer informed the pilot he would experience a headwind during the entire route of flight. While attempting to navigate via VORs, the pilot became lost, and the airplane was low on fuel. Unable to locate an airport, the pilot executed a precautionary landing. During the landing, the airplane impacted a drainage ditch and a fence.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to properly navigate during the day VFR cross-country flight, which resulted in the pilot becoming disoriented.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW04LA026
- Event ID
- 20031125X01949
- Case number
- FTW04LA026
- 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: 81e30ab70b3db379d667a740cc7da686df61837a455683c524782ef33d84ee71; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:19:17.396Z.