NYC07CA014 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Mid Ohio Valley Regional Airport (PKB) to Morgantown Municipal Airport Walter L. (Bill) Hart Field (MGW)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC07CA014
- 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
- N952AC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From Mid Ohio Valley Regional Airport (PKB), Parkersburg, WVTo Morgantown Municipal Airport Walter L. (Bill) Hart Field (MGW), Morgantown, WV
- 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Flight instructor(on ground) › Preflight planning/preparation, improper
- Flight instructor(on ground) › Supervision, improper
- Pilot in command › Directional control, 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
The student pilot departed from his home airport on a solo cross-country flight. He performed a "touch and go" at his first destination. He then proceeded to his second intended destination but, his first approach to the runway was "too high" so he executed a go around. He then attempted to land a second time. Due to "gusting winds," he was unable to land and elected to return to his home airport. Upon arriving at his home airport, he found that the wind was also gusting and his plane "floated" during the flare for landing. He attempted to go around, but the right wing "rose up" abruptly, the plane veered to the left, and struck trees. The student pilot's flight instructor reviewed the wind conditions prior to the student pilot's flight, and completed a logbook endorsement, which included a limitation of a 15-knot maximum headwind and 12-knot maximum crosswind. Winds at the approximate time of departure were forecast to be gusting to 25 knots. A weather observation made 15 minutes prior to the accident recorded the wind to be varying in direction 70 degrees, and gusting to 23 knots.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to maintain directional control and the flight instructor's improper planning and supervision of the student's solo cross country flight. A contributing factor was the wind gusts.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC07CA014
- Event ID
- 20061204X01725
- Case number
- NYC07CA014
- 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: 9eb301fca60324d10917191427a4e08dfa1ab902e6bac59e9f23c7df72855ffe; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:16:55.100Z.