ERA11FA493 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin while maneuvering
From Greenville Municipal Airport (3B1) to Greenville Municipal Airport (3B1)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11FA493
- 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 172M
- 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
- N9932V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Greenville Municipal Airport (3B1), Greenville, METo Greenville Municipal Airport (3B1), Greenville, ME
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On the morning of the accident, the airplane was observed circling at low altitude in a left turn about 1 mile southwest of the departure airport with the pilot visibly waving at people on the ground. During the third and last circle, the airplane pitched nose up, decelerated, then pitched nose down steeply and descended toward the ground. The airplane then rotated to the left with its nose still pointed down, turned about 180 degrees from its original direction of travel, then disappeared from view. Moments later the sound of an impact was heard.
Postaccident examination of the airplane and engine did not reveal any evidence of preimpact malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Toxicological testing of the pilot revealed the presence of carbon monoxide in his blood; however, the carbon monoxide level was consistent with a heavy smoking habit. Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) (marijuana) was also detected in his lungs but not in his blood, and THC corboxylic acid was detected in his urine, liver, and lungs. However, the THC findings were consistent with a remote usage of marijuana (that is, not immediately before flight), and the absence of THC in his blood indicated that the pilot was likely not impaired.
Download of a portable GPS discovered in the wreckage confirmed the witness' observations of the airplane’s flightpath and that the pilot was maneuvering at low altitude (less than 500 feet above ground level) when the airplane decelerated below its aerodynamic stall speed and entered a spin. Review of manufacturer's published data indicated that altitude loss during a stall recovery could be as much as 250 feet, and 1,000 feet of altitude loss for a one-turn spin and recovery could be expected.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed while manuevering at low altitude, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall/spin and subsequent impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11FA493
- Event ID
- 20110917X10112
- Case number
- ERA11FA493
- 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: 98b7644b1f0767ab4ae7c6bfb2748eaf05303337e3978e18414fc5d290870793; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:49:59.456Z.