ERA10FA029 · Cessna 172P
Sky Training Cessna 172P · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) on approach
From Greenwood Lake Airport (4N1) to Greenwood Lake Airport (4N1)
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
- ERA10FA029
- 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
- 1 · 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 172P
- 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
- N55479
- Operator
- Sky Training
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From Greenwood Lake Airport (4N1), West Milford, NJTo Greenwood Lake Airport (4N1), West Milford, 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
- Approach · VFR pattern base
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (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
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot entered the traffic pattern at night and was observed flying in a right-hand traffic pattern to runway 13. The Airport/Facility Directory did not direct right-hand traffic for runway 13. Witnesses observed the pilot having difficulty landing the airplane; he was flying too high on final approach and performed at least two go-arounds. The airplane was last observed with its navigation lights illuminated on the base leg as the airplane impacted trees and terrain. Two witnesses stated that the engine was running at the time of impact. The wreckage came to rest on wooded terrain, at an elevation of about 1,082 feet, or about 250 feet above the airport's elevation. If the pilot had flown the same altitude on a left-hand pattern to runway 13, at the same point in the pattern where the accident occurred, the airplane would have cleared the terrain by about 300 feet. Examination of the wreckage revealed no evidence of preexisting mechanical anomalies. Inspection of the pilot’s logbook showed no evidence that he had previously flown approaches at the airport.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain clearance from terrain during a night approach. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s non-standard traffic pattern over higher terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10FA029
- Event ID
- 20091026X23547
- Case number
- ERA10FA029
- 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: 6d4d7a618dfbc033b329bcd3cd2aecf2c6a5dc893a3b2fc97bb7bdb1842643f1; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:32:15.832Z.