CEN13FA012 · Cessna 172R
Flightline Leasing Cessna 172R · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Pineville Municipal Airport (2L0) to Orange County Airport (ORG)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13FA012
- 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 172R
- 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
- N2126R
- Operator
- Flightline Leasing
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pineville Municipal Airport (2L0), Pineville, LATo Orange County Airport (ORG), Orange, 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed on a night cross-country flight. When he did not reach his destination, the flight was reported missing and the wreckage was found the following day. Recorded radar data revealed that, after departure, the airplane climbed for about 15 minutes, maneuvered, then made a descending right turn between two areas of precipitation. Postaccident examination of the wreckage revealed no preimpact malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
The pilot did not have a current medical certificate. According to his personal medical records, he had a history of hypertension, insomnia, and inflammatory arthritis. About a month before the accident, the pilot reported symptoms from his arthritis, including increased joint pain and stiffness, to his personal physician and received treatment. Ten days later, the pilot called his physician's office for a refill of his narcotic pain medication. Toxicology testing of tissue samples found zolpidem and hydrocodone, both of which carry a warning of mental and/or physical impairment. However, the extent to which the pilot's medical conditions and his use of potentially impairing medications may have affected his judgment or psychomotor functioning cannot be determined from available evidence.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of airplane control while maneuvering between areas of precipitation during a night cross-country flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13FA012
- Event ID
- 20121015X01619
- Case number
- CEN13FA012
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2012-10-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b003f196ef4716b9d314809d130b5e0b88f633699654d2c253d473844a1a7880; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:45:59.956Z.