ERA10LA233 · Cessna 172H
Cessna 172H · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin while maneuvering
From The Trails Airport (FD50) to Flying Ten Airport (0J8)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA233
- 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 172H
- 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
- N8112L
- Operator
- Gyles Arthur John
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From The Trails Airport (FD50), Live Oak, FLTo Flying Ten Airport (0J8), Archer, FL
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was discovered in the wreckage of his airplane, one-quarter mile east of the destination airport, an estimated one hour after the accident. Before he was transported to the hospital, where he died of his injuries, he told a police detective that he did not recall the accident. A review of photographs and satellite images revealed that the pasture where the airplane came to rest was adjacent, and parallel to, the turf runway at the destination airport. The initial ground scar in the field was abeam the approach end of the runway. It could not be determined if the pilot mistook the field site for the airport, or if he attempted a forced landing there, but the dimensions and the surface conditions of the field site could have supported a normal landing. Deformation of the airframe and flight controls were consistent with a 35-degree, nose-low, high-energy impact consistent with a stall. Postaccident examination of the wreckage revealed no evidence of mechanical anomalies.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed for undetermined reasons while maneuvering in the vicinity of an airport, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA233
- Event ID
- 20100419X02620
- Case number
- ERA10LA233
- 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: 4b2b0ae5dd0a0ee20bbe86e93fcbfd1136ad64f59bb79c5211325de40845d192; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:46:03.295Z.