WPR11FA117 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) while maneuvering
From Brackett Field (POC) to Brackett Field (POC)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11FA117
- 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 172
- 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
- N6922A
- Operator
- Gene A. Yu · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brackett Field (POC), La Verne, CATo Brackett Field (POC), La Verne, CA
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that he and the commercially certificated student flew to mountainous terrain to practice using orographic lift. The flight instructor stated that the lift they were flying in began to dissipate so he took the flight controls and added full power to depart the area. Suddenly, they encountered a strong downdraft and moments later they impacted the terrain. It is likely that the airplane was not at a sufficient altitude for the pilot to recover from the downdraft encounter and clear the terrain. The flight instructor told local authorities at the time of his rescue that there were no problems with the airplane. A postaccident examination revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical anomalies with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The flight crew's failure to maintain adequate terrain clearance while maneuvering in downdraft conditions over mountains.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11FA117
- Event ID
- 20110131X14558
- Case number
- WPR11FA117
- 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, coordinates. 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: f084d4eba9b581a60767c589043030a916902913cb9e89dac61b9ff7adac2ae5; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:43:36.915Z.