CEN15FA083 · Cessna 172M
American Patrols Cessna 172M · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Skywest Inc Airport (7T7) to Skywest Inc Airport (7T7)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15FA083
- 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
- N9922V
- Operator
- American Patrols
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Skywest Inc Airport (7T7), Odessa, TXTo Skywest Inc Airport (7T7), Odessa, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 40 years (built 1974)
- 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
- 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
- Destroyed
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
The pilot was flying an aerial survey flight to look for oil and water pipeline leaks. Three witnesses reported seeing the airplane flying about 400 to 500 ft above ground level, enter a steep left bank, and then dive nose down toward the ground. One witness estimated that the airplane's bank angle was about 80 degrees. Shortly after, witnesses observed smoke and flames coming from the accident site. A witness at the accident site reported that the airplane was engulfed in flames with the airplane's tail in a vertical position and the wings flat on the ground. The leading edge crush angle was consistent with about a 30- to 40-degree nose-down, left-wing-low attitude. A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Three days after the accident, another pilot overflew the accident area and observed a large water leak about 0.3 mile from the accident location. An oilfield worker who provided spill remediation estimated that the water would had to have been leaking for a few days for the leak to get so large. It is likely that the pilot observed the water leak during the accident flight and used an excessive bank angle to maneuver the airplane so that he could more closely observe the leak and that the airplane then experienced an accelerated stall with insufficient altitude for a recovery.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain adequate airspeed while maneuvering at an excessive bank angle at a low altitude, which resulted in an accelerated stall and spin with insufficient altitude for a recovery.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15FA083
- Event ID
- 20141222X12716
- Case number
- CEN15FA083
- 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: c98692a1db6bb5ed07de6cb96cdcea8e0f2813cb99a7a84a7a64f7e557d45a97; retrieved 2026-09-14T17:30:04.323Z.