ERA16FA329 · Cessna 172 P
Cessna 172 P · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during an emergency descent
From Davis Airstrip (W50) to Montgomery County Airpark (GAI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16FA329
- 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 P
- 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
- N52126
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Davis Airstrip (W50), Laytonsville, MDTo Montgomery County Airpark (GAI), Gaithersburg, MD
- Aircraft age
- About 36 years (built 1980)
- 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
- Emergency descent
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Earlier on the day of the accident, the pilot/mechanic flew the airplane from its home base airport to another airport to perform scheduled maintenance. Airport security video captured the entire maintenance event and showed the pilot/mechanic removing the engine cowling, draining the engine oil, and inspecting the spark plugs, air filter, and other components. The video did not show him adding engine oil before reinstalling the engine cowling and departing on the accident flight. Shortly after takeoff, the pilot reported to an air traffic controller that the airplane's engine was losing power and that he was returning to the airport. Witnesses reported that the airplane began to fly erratically, rolled into a steep bank, and descended to ground impact about 1 mile from the airport. The witness observations were consistent with the pilot failing to maintain airspeed following the loss of engine power, which resulted in the airplane exceeding its critical angle of attack and experiencing an aerodynamic stall. Postaccident disassembly of the engine revealed catastrophic failure of internal engine components and signatures consistent with no lubrication and high heat.
Probable cause
The pilot/mechanic's failure to maintain airspeed following a loss of engine power, which resulted in the airplane exceeding its critical angle of attack and experiencing an aerodynamic stall. Also causal was the pilot/mechanic's failure to service the engine with oil following maintenance, which resulted in the total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16FA329
- Event ID
- 20160927X94824
- Case number
- ERA16FA329
- 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: 66817eb110f7eaa1282e563632636bc37a823f2bcaf70897dd530728a0f07193; retrieved 2026-09-14T22:00:44.264Z.