CEN19LA070 · Cessna 172 M
Cessna 172 M · Accident while maneuvering
From Draughon Miller Central Texas Regional Airport (TPL) to Winston Field (SNK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19LA070
- 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 172 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
- N254RA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Draughon Miller Central Texas Regional Airport (TPL), Temple, TXTo Winston Field (SNK), Snyder, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 43 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was conducting a pipeline patrol flight. He reported that, while he was looking down in the cockpit writing down observations about the pipeline, he felt the airplane pull left; the airplane had struck a cell tower wire. The pilot stated that he did not see the wire because he was looking down. The pilot was able to control the airplane, immediately declared an emergency, and landed at an airport about 10 miles north of where the wire strike occurred.
Examination of the airplane revealed that a 4-ft-long section of the left wing was torn off the airplane, just outboard of the left aileron. The pilot stated that many pipeline patrol operations have an observer onboard in addition to the pilot, one of whom looks outside the airplane to observe the pipeline while the other person writes down the observations. He also stated that he could have waited to write down information after passing the tower area.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to see and avoid a cell tower wire during a pipeline patrol flight. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's distraction due to writing down observations about the pipeline while flying.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19LA070
- Event ID
- 20181223X85212
- Case number
- CEN19LA070
- 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, coordinates. 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: cb7591453e722229a930913290b5cf1ccebc084d2856671b070eebf295282dcc; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:30:45.205Z.