DFW08WA050 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident
From Islas Secas to Volcan
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's registration. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW08WA050
- 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
- Unknown · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- API-reported fatalities
- 3 · 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
- Not recorded
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
- HP762 Narrative disagrees
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Islas SecasTo Volcan
- 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
- Non-U.S., Non-Commercial
- 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
- Not recorded
- Defining eventThe 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
- Not recorded
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
On December 23, 2007, a Panama registered Cessna 172, HP762, was destroyed upon impact with terrain in the mountainous region of Chiriqui near Boquete, Panama. The pilot and two passengers sustained fatal injuries and one passenger sustained serious injuries. The airplane departed Islas Secas at approximately 1145 central daylight time. It was reported that the last communication occurred around 1203.
The investigation is under the jurisdiction of the government of Panama. Further information pertaining to this accident may be obtained from:
Direccion de Aeronautica Civil Apartados 7501 y 7615 Panama 5 http://www.aeronautica.gob.pa
This report is for information purposes only and contains only information released by the Panamanian Government.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW08WA050
- Event ID
- 20080108X00031
- Case number
- DFW08WA050
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 75e326a44183b5c0e7707b97aa39b7eb46d22a69606339f59cf3ad9f69c7a03a; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:03:01.097Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: registration. The narrative states "a Panama registered Cessna 172, HP762, was destroyed upon impact with terrain".