ATL06CA106 · Cessna 172F
Cessna 172F · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Richard B Russell Airport (RMG) to Richard B Russell Airport (RMG)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL06CA106
- 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
- N5324R
- Operator
- David Bradley Gilbert
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Richard B Russell Airport (RMG), Rome, GATo Richard B Russell Airport (RMG), Rome, GA
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Stall
- 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 › Airspeed, 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
According to the pilot he was to fly over the local area and then return to the airport. The pilot stated that he was to fly three circles over a banner that the family had placed on the tarmac. The pilot said that the airplane was functioning normally at the time of the accident but believed he was too slow and low with an aft center of gravity. A witness confirmed that the airplane was very low, and very slow, at about 100 feet away and 75 feet above ground level as he crossed the tarmac. As the pilot transmitted information about his turns the stall warning horn could be heard in the background. The witness stated that the airplane started to "wobble," and just before it reached the "Big Hangar the nose went up and the entire airplane turned left about 160-degrees, first landing on its left wing and then smashing down on its front."
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed, which resulted in an inadvertent stall, and subsequent impact with the ground.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL06CA106
- Event ID
- 20061003X01441
- Case number
- ATL06CA106
- 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: 822d03f1b70d6c0f32c70a178043b3e2a6b56679613020210b12036cefb0722b; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:55:26.080Z.