CEN20LA214 · Cessna 172 M
Cardinal Wings Aviation Cessna 172 M · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Bowman Field (LOU) to Bowman Field (LOU)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20LA214
- 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
- 0
- 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
- N13520
- Operator
- Cardinal Wings Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bowman Field (LOU), Louisville, KYTo Bowman Field (LOU), Louisville, KY
- Aircraft age
- About 47 years (built 1973)
- 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
- 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 student pilot was to conduct a solo practice flight in preparation for his private pilot check ride. The flight was to include maneuvers in a specific practice area. The pilot’s flight instructor stated that he tracked the airplane on his phone and the flight track disappeared about 20 minutes into the flight. The recorded automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast data revealed that the airplane departed and climbed to about 3,000 ft above ground level. While in the practice area, the airplane completed 3 consecutive left steep turn maneuvers towards the northeast and remained about 3,000 ft agl. Less than 1 minute later the airplane descended and proceeded southeast; this flight track continued into a steep dive in excess of 10,000 ft per minute and a calculated groundspeed of about 170 kts.
The airplane wreckage was located in a field; the debris path was oriented southeast and extended about 300 yards. All major components of the airplane were located at the accident site and there was no post impact fire. Postaccident examinations revealed findings indicative of the engine operating at the time of the accident, which were also consistent with the high velocity descent. There were no mechanical malfunctions or anomalies found with the engine or airframe that would have precluded normal operation. No medical findings were identified in the pilot’s autopsy or toxicology.
The accident is consistent with a wings-level, high velocity descent and impact with terrain for reasons that could not be determined with the available information.
Probable cause
A high velocity descent and impact with terrain for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20LA214
- Event ID
- 20200606X83047
- Case number
- CEN20LA214
- 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, cause areas. 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: 2b1e25c8d2b840989a89aedcb37ca12aa0e959b3c0266276626e03199593c34b; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:15:50.408Z.