ERA14LA158 · Cessna 172K
Skypark Cessna 172K · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) en route
From Elizabethton Municipal Airport (0A9) to Weltzien Skypark Airport (15G)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA158
- 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 172K
- 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
- N46603
- Operator
- Skypark
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Elizabethton Municipal Airport (0A9), Elizabethton, TNTo Weltzien Skypark Airport (15G), Wadsworth, OH
- Aircraft age
- About 46 years (built 1968)
- 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 · climb to 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
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and two passengers were returning home on a cross-country flight. The pilot departed on the accident flight from runway 06 on the left downwind leg with the intention of flying over a mountain range; the airport facility directory current at the time of the accident stated that departures from runway 06 were required to make right traffic, which is intended to provide departing aircraft with adequate clearance from the surrounding terrain. During the climb, the pilot became concerned that the airplane would not clear the approaching rising terrain, so he attempted to maneuver the airplane away from it; however, the airplane subsequently impacted trees and terrain. Examination of the wreckage revealed no preexisting mechanical anomalies with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot did not calculate the performance requirements needed to clear the 3,000-ft-tall mountain peak before the flight. Performance calculations based on data reported by the pilot indicated that the airplane's climb rate was too low to provide clearance from terrain along the pilot's selected route.
Probable cause
The pilot’s delayed decision to maneuver around rising terrain, which resulted in a collision with trees and terrain. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s failure to calculate the performance requirements needed to climb over mountainous terrain before the flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA158
- Event ID
- 20140319X03744
- Case number
- ERA14LA158
- 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: c2e58fe5c9ab6e53bc0e6c2e7d184f1ffee26a7dd02e164b6e4c9e969b7577cf; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:24:34.651Z.