CEN11LA153 · Cessna 172A
Cessna 172A · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) on approach
From Abilene Regional Airport (ABI) to Smiley Johnson Municipal Airport Bass Field (E34)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11LA153
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172A
- 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
- N7262T
- Operator
- John A. Little · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Abilene Regional Airport (ABI), Abilene, TXTo Smiley Johnson Municipal Airport Bass Field (E34), Clarendon, TX
- 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 downwind
- 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 from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, it was dark when he arrived at his destination. He saw the airport's rotating beacon but was unable to remotely activate the runway lights. He maneuvered the airplane onto the downwind leg of the traffic pattern, extended the flaps and reduced engine power. He thought the airplane was 900 feet above the ground when the airplane impacted terrain approximately 2-1/2 miles east of the airport. At the accident site, the altimeter read 7,500 feet. The terrain was approximately 2,800 feet. There were no mechanical anomalies found with the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to correctly set the altimeter, which resulted in his erroneous perception that the airplane was at a safe altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11LA153
- Event ID
- 20110117X61629
- Case number
- CEN11LA153
- 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 2011-01-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0faa73bdceebb24400ab6c5b3f2cbe1a9c13651df217175f69970190fa8fbb6e; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:41:46.448Z.