NYC08CA170 · Cessna 172F
Cessna 172F · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) on approach
From Dansville Municipal Airport (DSV) to Westchester County Airport (HPN)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08CA170
- 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
- Instrument 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
- N5382R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dansville Municipal Airport (DSV), Dansville, NYTo Westchester County Airport (HPN), White Plains, NY
- 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 · IFR final approach
- 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
- Collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on the instrument landing system (ILS) approach, the pilot of a Cessna 172F, acquired the runway visually. About 3 miles from the runway, he closed his flight plan and continued the visual descent to the runway. The pilot stated he could not see the four-light precision approach path indicator (PAPI) and he failed to monitor his descent path. The airplane descended below the glideslope, impacted the approach lights, and then the localizer antenna. The airplane then nosed over and came to rest inverted prior to the runway threshold. The pilot reported no mechanical difficulties with the airplane prior to the accident. During the impact, the airplane sustained damage to the fuselage, wings, and empennage.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain the proper glide path during the approach.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08CA170
- Event ID
- 20080519X00698
- Case number
- NYC08CA170
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2008-04-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 08a6266eb946342b9da9ba17951625b6582feeeec11fc54ad314db31bd483d71; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:40:21.671Z.