ERA14LA122 · Cessna 172M M
Cessna 172M M · Accident: hard landing
From Springfield Branson National Airport (SGF) to Northwest Alabama Regional Airport (MSL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA122
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172M M
- 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
- N194EX
- Operator
- Billy J. Lyons · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Springfield Branson National Airport (SGF), Springfield, MOTo Northwest Alabama Regional Airport (MSL), Muscle Shoals, AL
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1975)
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The noninstrument-rated pilot departed late in the afternoon in marginal visual flight rules (VFR) conditions. After climbing the airplane to the desired cruising altitude, he was forced to descend due to worsening weather conditions to maintain VFR. Shortly after, an air traffic controller advised the pilot that the weather conditions at the destination airport had deteriorated and suggested a diversionary airport. While en route to the diversionary airport in dark night and worsening weather conditions, the pilot chose to perform a precautionary landing to a field. The airplane landed hard in muddy terrain, which resulted in substantial damage to the empennage and right wing and serious injury to the passenger.
Examination of the wreckage revealed no preimpact mechanical anomaly that would have precluded normal operation. The copilot seat was found separated from its rails. Maintenance log entries showed compliance with a Federal Aviation Administration airworthiness directive (AD) for inspection of seat rail wear during the airplane's annual inspection 10 months before the accident. Postaccident examination and measurement of the dimensions of the seat rails revealed that they were worn but that they did not exceed the allowable tolerances specified in the AD. According to the passenger, she had unfastened her seat belt and shoulder harness during the flight to retrieve a fallen article on the floor of the cockpit and did not recall if she refastened the seatbelt and shoulder harness before landing.
Probable cause
The noninstrument-rated pilot’s decision to continue flight into deteriorating weather conditions at night and his failure to divert in a timely manner, which resulted in an off-airport precautionary landing and subsequent substantial damage to the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA122
- Event ID
- 20140216X25111
- Case number
- ERA14LA122
- 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: 39341c316a18cb3dc3ff7177969b353d6f69e5fc83579a54153bd6ed2e051774; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:19:29.862Z.