NYC07FA052 · Cessna TR182
Cessna TR182 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Dare County Regional Airport (MQI) to Shelby-Cleveland County Regional Airport (EHO)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC07FA052
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna TR182
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N7090S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dare County Regional Airport (MQI), Manteo, NCTo Shelby-Cleveland County Regional Airport (EHO), Shelby, NC
- 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
- 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
- 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 › 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
While receiving vectors for an instrument approach, the pilot had difficulty maintaining his assigned heading and altitude. The air traffic controller issued numerous vectors to the pilot to assist him on the approach, and instructed him to "check [his] altitude," when he observed the airplane was 400 feet too low. Witnesses observed the airplane emerge from the base of a cloud deck, in a nose-dive, then break apart prior to impacting the ground. An examination of the airplane revealed no preimpact mechanical anomalies. Sections of the left wing exhibited upward loading. The pilot reported 465 hours of total flight experience, and 7.8 hours of total actual instrument experience. The pilot's most recent actual instrument experience was 1 hour, recorded 3 months prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's spatial disorientation, which resulted in a loss of aircraft control and subsequent in-flight breakup. Contributing to the accident was instrument meteorological conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC07FA052
- Event ID
- 20070111X00045
- Case number
- NYC07FA052
- 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: 5fe174be97e0306ae54c6ef59e9b5c35bb4c6cc4fb6cb8c39b35eda7ee803f17; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:55:35.039Z.