IAD05LA028 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From L38 · Gonzales, LA to Paoli Municipal Airport (I42)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD05LA028
- 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 172
- 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
- N6225E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From L38 · Gonzales, LATo Paoli Municipal Airport (I42), Paoli, IN
- 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot departed on the 550-mile trip with an unknown quantity of fuel in visual meteorological conditions. He had 125 total hours of flight experience, and did not possess an instrument rating. There was no record of the pilot obtaining a weather briefing, nor did he file a flight plan. About 4 hours into the flight, and during the hours of darkness, the pilot reported that the airplane was in instrument meteorological conditions, and requested assistance from air traffic control. The conversation between the pilot and the controller continued for several minutes as they discussed weather conditions at various destinations along and around the pilot's intended course. During the conversations, the airplane completed a series of left and right 360-degree turns, and figure-8 maneuvers, as the airplane climbed and descended between 7,000 feet and 10,200 feet. As the airplane continued to circle, the controller issued a heading and suggested the pilot check his heading indicator in relation to his magnetic compass. The pilot replied, "...we're trying to keep it under control and get back to the stars here so we got a reference point." Over the next 5 minutes, the airplane completed three 360-degree right turns. The final radar plots depicted a descending turn to the right, about 9,800 feet, and then the target disappeared. Examination of the wreckage at the scene revealed no mechanical anomalies.
Probable cause
the pilot's loss of control in flight due to spatial disorientation. Also causal to the accident was the pilot's inadequate preflight planning which resulted in his inadvertent flight into night instrument meteorological conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD05LA028
- Event ID
- 20050128X00117
- Case number
- IAD05LA028
- 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 2005-01-01.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ba3e526db0a9753d96dffc249628aef2f58511e09eabe551a33286e15579c931; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:09:52.626Z.