NYC08FA215 · Cessna P337H
Cessna P337H · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From MIV · Millinocket, ME to Essex County Airport (CDW)
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
- NYC08FA215
- 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
- 2 · 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 P337H
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 337
- 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
- N15EM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From MIV · Millinocket, METo Essex County Airport (CDW), Caldwell, NJ
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to departing on a cross-country flight, the pilot contacted a flight service station. The pilot was informed that visual flight rules (VFR) flight was not recommended, and after obtaining a weather briefing he filed an instrument-flight-rules (IFR) flight plan. The airplane departed in visual meteorological conditions and the pilot subsequently informed air traffic control that he was experiencing a problem with the airplane's artificial horizon, and that he wanted to try to conduct the flight under VFR. Approximately 15 minutes later, the pilot requested activation of his IFR flight plan. The airplane was flying in instrument meteorological conditions with light to moderate precipitation when radar and radio communications were lost. Radar data indicated that the airplane's heading varied from southwest to northwest, with a turn to the southeast immediately prior to the loss of radar contact. The airplane maintained an altitude between 7,900 and 8,200 feet, except for the last recorded altitude reading, which was at 7,200 feet. The airplane impacted the Atlantic Ocean at a high rate of speed and was not recovered. Review of the airplane's maintenance records revealed that its most recent annual inspection was conducted about 6 months prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper decision to continue the flight in instrument meteorological conditions after experiencing an attitude indicator malfunction.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08FA215
- Event ID
- 20080628X00942
- Case number
- NYC08FA215
- 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: investigation status. 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: 0c8a00e5b09fbf183826c408f1bfd27a863ee53dacf08d8dabb03edadb272702; retrieved 2026-09-13T19:10:17.096Z.