CEN15FA378 · Cessna 172 UNDESIGNAT
Cessna 172 UNDESIGNAT · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Casey Municipal Airport (1H8) to Casey Municipal Airport (1H8)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15FA378
- 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 172 UNDESIGNAT
- 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
- N8265B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Casey Municipal Airport (1H8), Casey, ILTo Casey Municipal Airport (1H8), Casey, IL
- Aircraft age
- About 58 years (built 1957)
- 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
- 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 non-certificated pilot departed in the airplane for a personal flight. The airplane crashed in a soybean field about 11 miles from the departure airport. There were no witnesses, no recorded radar data, and no recorded radio transmissions from the pilot. Ground scars indicated that the airplane impacted the ground in about a 30° nose-down attitude. Two tracks correlating to the dimensions of the left main and nose landing gears extended about 294 ft on the tops of the soybean crop before the initial ground impact. All ground scars and damage to the airplane correlated to ground impact with high momentum. No evidence of pre-impact anomalies was found during postaccident examination of the airframe, engine, and propeller.
Although the pilot was being treated for metastatic colon cancer there is no evidence that the cancer or its treatment impaired his ability to operate the airplane and it is unlikely that it contributed directly to the accident. Toxicology testing found the impairing medications; alprazolam, codeine, fentanyl, and oxycodone.
Given the pilot's lack of certification, his limited recent experience, and his operation of the airplane while taking disqualifying and potentially impairing medications, it is likely that the pilot failed to maintain adequate clearance from terrain while intentionally flying at low altitude. Although the pilot was likely impaired by the combination of multiple medications, the investigation could not determine to what degree the pilot's lack flight skills and experience or impairment from multiple medications contributed to the loss of control of the airplane.
Probable cause
The non-certificated pilot's failure to maintain clearance from terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15FA378
- Event ID
- 20150825X00118
- Case number
- CEN15FA378
- 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: cce8663c92513c9a4b9c0d91f8ac51889a1738483809c9b1eda5c93b2e05e20b; retrieved 2026-09-14T21:29:13.311Z.