NYC06FA154 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From Bethel Regional Airport (0B1) to 0B1
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC06FA154
- 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
- 4 · 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
- N572BA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bethel Regional Airport (0B1), Bethel, METo 0B1
- 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 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After boarding three Air Force Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps cadets for an orientation flight, the flight instructor of the Cessna 172 executed a takeoff. Once airborne, the airplane made an "immediate" right turn directly towards a mountain. The airplane continued towards the mountain, paralleled the mountain's face, then passed over the mountain and out of sight. The wreckage was located in a heavily wooded area 2,070 feet above sea level. The debris path and impact marks were consistent with a near vertical impact. Also, no preimpact mechanical malfunctions were discovered when the wreckage was examined. The flight instructor had a history of flying low and performing maneuvers bordering on excessive with cadets onboard. The day of the accident and on the flight prior to the accident flight, cadets experienced zero-g maneuvers, along with near vertical climbs and descents with the pilot recovering between 75 to 100 feet above the ground.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's failure to maintain altitude/clearance while maneuvering, which resulted in an impact with trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC06FA154
- Event ID
- 20060705X00863
- Case number
- NYC06FA154
- 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: 604cf75ea74f24ea520ff37e1c20a0da9c47322e46399d9a63195364f501e512; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:17:02.258Z.