NYC05LA033 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: in flight encounter with weather while maneuvering
From Morrow County Airport (4I9) to 4I9
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC05LA033
- 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
- 3 · 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
- N737AZ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Morrow County Airport (4I9), Cardington, OHTo 4I9
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to the accident flight the weather was conducive for visual flight rules operations, but deteriorated "rapidly" as the pilot taxied to the runway. Once airborne, the airplane entered an overcast cloud layer at approximately 300 feet agl, and then was heard circling back towards the airport. Shortly thereafter, the airplane descended out of the overcast at a high rate of speed, in a nose low attitude, and impacted the ground. The pilot held a private pilot certificate, but no instrument rating. She had flown 27 hours in the accident airplane in the preceding 90 days, but in the previous year, did not log any night or instrument flight experience. Examination of the airplane did not reveal any evidence of preimpact failures or malfunctions.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane following an inadvertent encounter with instrument meteorological conditions. A factor in the accident was the rapidly deteriorating weather.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC05LA033
- Event ID
- 20050114X00050
- Case number
- NYC05LA033
- 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: 8f2f5010e1c00d7f9c1c3e74182d371c645c5354528fee5453da4bdd07a2ec2a; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:10:02.868Z.