ERA12FA572 · Cessna 172S
Cessna 172S · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) en route
From Pensacola International Airport (PNS) to Tampa Executive Airport (VDF)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12FA572
- 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 172S
- 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
- N21750
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pensacola International Airport (PNS), Pensacola, FLTo Tampa Executive Airport (VDF), Tampa, 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
- En route · descent
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Physical
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot purchased the airplane and he was returning to his home base. The pilot checked in with an approach controller about 52 miles north-northwest of the destination airport; at the time, the airplane was flying under visual flight rules, and night visual meteorological conditions prevailed. The pilot initiated a gradual descent from 7,500 feet mean sea level and an air traffic controller radioed the pilot after he observed the airplane descending below 1,000 feet mean sea level. The pilot never responded to the controller’s radio calls, and the airplane impacted pastureland about 17 miles from the destination airport.
Examination of the wreckage revealed that the airplane collided with trees at a very shallow descent angle. No evidence of a pre-existing mechanical failure or anomaly was observed.
A review of the pilot’s actions during the 9 days prior to the accident revealed that he flew a 5-day international trip as a crewmember for the airline for which he flew as a captain, and then returned to Zurich 3 days before the accident. About 4 hours later, he began a trip as a passenger to Colorado.
On the day before the accident, the pilot began the first of three legs of a cross country flight, with the third leg being the accident flight. He was awake for about 18 hours at the time of the accident, with stops only being taken for food and airplane servicing.
Over the 9-day period before the accident, the pilot made three crossings of the Atlantic Ocean (each exceeding 6 time zones). These multiple and frequent time zone crossings would result in circadian disruption and would have diminished the pilot’s ability to obtain restorative sleep during this period, which, in combination with the pilot’s extended time awake on the day of the accident, would have caused the pilot to be in a fatigued state. The circumstances of the accident and his fatigue-inducing schedule in the preceding days indicate that the pilot most likely fell asleep during the initial descent for landing, and the airplane subsequently descended into the trees and terrain.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to continue the cross-country flight while fatigued, which resulted in him falling asleep during the initial descent for landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12FA572
- Event ID
- 20120922X41332
- Case number
- ERA12FA572
- 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: c8862afac4f9e6cb6653c91e5000ea0d989bc75de5a461d54135de223a77d888; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:44:59.907Z.